Leaves of Grass

An excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Whitman salutes the locomotive as a symbol of progress and writes of the hallmarks of a Western journey.

} To a Locomotive in Winter

  • Thee for my recitative,
  • Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
  • Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
  • Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,
  • Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
  • Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front,
  • Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
  • The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
  • Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,
  • Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
  • Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
  • Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
  • For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
  • With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
  • By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,
  • By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.
  • >Fierce-throated beauty!
  • Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,
  • Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
  • Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
  • (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
  • Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
  • Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes,
  • To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

} Passage to India

1

  • Singing my days,
  • Singing the great achievements of the present,
  • Singing the strong light works of engineers,
  • Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
  • In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
  • The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,
  • The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;
  • Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,
  • The Past! the Past! the Past!
  • The Past—the dark unfathom'd retrospect!
  • The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows!
  • The past—the infinite greatness of the past!
  • For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
  • (As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on,
  • So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)

2

  • Passage O soul to India!
  • Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.
  • Not you alone proud truths of the world,
  • Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,
  • But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's fables,
  • The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos'd dreams,
  • The deep diving bibles and legends,
  • The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;
  • O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over by the rising sun!
  • O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!
  • You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish'd with gold!
  • Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from mortal dreams!
  • You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!
  • You too with joy I sing.
  • Passage to India!
  • Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
  • The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,
  • The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
  • The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
  • The lands to be welded together.
  • A worship new I sing,
  • You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
  • You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
  • You, not for trade or transportation only,
  • But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul.

3

  • Passage to India!
  • Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,
  • I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd,
  • I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Engenie's leading the van,
  • I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance,
  • I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather'd,
  • The gigantic dredging machines.
  • In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)
  • I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,
  • I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers,
  • I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,
  • I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,
  • I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes,
  • I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts,
  • I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains,
  • I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest, I pass the
  • Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,
  • I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,
  • I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,
  • I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
  • Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,
  • Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,
  • Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
  • Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
  • The road between Europe and Asia.
  • (Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!
  • Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
  • The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)

4

  • Passage to India!
  • Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
  • Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,
  • Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.
  • Along all history, down the slopes,
  • As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,
  • A ceaseless thought, a varied train—lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise,
  • The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;
  • Again Vasco de Gama sails forth,
  • Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compass,
  • Lands found and nations born, thou born America,
  • For purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd,
  • Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish'd.

5

  • O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
  • Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty,
  • Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
  • Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
  • Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
  • With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
  • Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.
  • Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
  • Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
  • Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
  • With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
  • With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and
  • Whither O mocking life?
  • Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
  • Who Justify these restless explorations?
  • Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
  • Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
  • What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours,
  • Cold earth, the place of graves.)
  • Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
  • Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
  • After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,)
  • After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work,
  • After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
  • Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
  • The true son of God shall come singing his songs.
  • Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified,
  • All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd,
  • All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,
  • All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together,
  • The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely Justified,
  • Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and compacted by the true son of God, the poet
  • (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
  • He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)
  • Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more,
  • The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

6

  • Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!
  • Year of the purpose accomplish'd!
  • Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!
  • (No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)
  • I see O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all,
  • Europe to Asia, Africa join'd, and they to the New World,
  • The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,
  • As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.
  • Passage to India!
  • Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,
  • The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.
  • Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,
  • The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth's lands,
  • The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many affluents,
  • (I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,)
  • The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying,
  • On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia,
  • To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal,
  • The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
  • Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha,
  • Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors,
  • The wars of Tamerlane,the reign of Aurungzebe,
  • The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians,
  • Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese,
  • The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,
  • Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be fill'd,
  • The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest,
  • Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.
  • The mediaeval navigators rise before me,
  • The world of 1492, with its awaken'd enterprise,
  • Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring,
  • The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.
  • And who art thou sad shade?
  • Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,
  • With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes,
  • Spreading around with every look of thine a golden world,
  • Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.
  • As the chief histrion,
  • Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,
  • Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,
  • (History's type of courage, action, faith,)
  • Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,
  • His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,
  • His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain'd,
  • Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
  • (Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes,
  • Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?
  • Lies the seed unreck'd for centuries in the ground? lo, to
  • God's due occasion,
  • Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,
  • And fills the earth with use and beauty.)

7

  • Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,
  • Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,
  • The young maturity of brood and bloom,
  • To realms of budding bibles.
  • O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,
  • Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,
  • Of man, the voyage of his mind's return,
  • To reason's early paradise,
  • Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions,
  • Again with fair creation.

8

  • O we can wait no longer,
  • We too take ship O soul,
  • Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
  • Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
  • Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
  • Caroling free, singing our song of God,
  • Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.
  • With laugh and many a kiss,
  • (Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,)
  • O soul thou pleasest me, I thee.
  • Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,
  • But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.
  • O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
  • Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,
  • Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
  • Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
  • Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
  • Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,
  • I and my soul to range in range of thee.
  • O Thou transcendent,
  • Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
  • Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,
  • Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,
  • Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection's source—thou reservoir,
  • (O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there?
  • Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)
  • Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,
  • That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,
  • Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,
  • How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself,
  • I could not launch, to those, superior universes?
  • Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
  • At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
  • But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,
  • And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
  • Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
  • And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.
  • eater than stars or suns,
  • Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;
  • What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?
  • What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?
  • What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?
  • What cheerful willingness for others' sake to give up all?
  • For others' sake to suffer all?
  • Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev'd,
  • The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done,
  • Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain'd,
  • As fill'd with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,
  • The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.

9

  • Passage to more than India!
  • Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?
  • O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?
  • Disportest thou on waters such as those?
  • Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?
  • Then have thy bent unleash'd.
  • Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!
  • Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!
  • You, strew'd with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living,
  • never reach'd you.
  • passage to more than India!
  • O secret of the earth and sky!
  • Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!
  • Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land!
  • Of you O prairies! of you gray rocks!
  • O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!
  • O day and night, passage to you!
  • O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!
  • Passage to you!
  • Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
  • Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
  • Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
  • Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
  • Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
  • Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
  • Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
  • Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
  • For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
  • And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
  • O my brave soul!
  • O farther farther sail!
  • O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
  • O farther, farther, farther sail!

About this Document

  • Source: Leaves of Grass
  • Author: Walt Whitman
  • Publisher: James R. Osgood and Company
  • Published: Boston
  • Date: 1881