Complete Prose Works

W >> Walt Whitman >> Complete Prose Works

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55

HOURS FOR THE SOUL

_July 22d, 1878_.--Living down in the country again. A wonderful
conjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hours
after sunset--so near and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days,
I notice, are not so very uncommon; but the combinations that make
perfect nights are few, even in a life time. We have one of those
perfections to-night. Sunset left things pretty clear; the larger
stars were visible soon as the shades allow'd. A while after 8, three
or four great black clouds suddenly rose, seemingly from different
points, and sweeping with broad swirls of wind but no thunder,
underspread the orbs from view everywhere, and indicated a violent
heatstorm. But without storm, clouds, blackness and all, sped and
vanish'd as suddenly as they had risen; and from a little after 9
till 11 the atmosphere and the whole show above were in that state
of exceptional clearness and glory just alluded to. In the northwest
turned the Great Dipper with its pointers round the Cynosure. A little
south of east the constellation of the Scorpion was fully up, with red
Antares glowing in its neck; while dominating, majestic Jupiter swam,
an hour and a half risen, in the east--(no moon till after 11.)
A large part of the sky seem'd just laid in great splashes of
phosphorus. You could look deeper in, farther through, than usual;
the orbs thick as heads of wheat in a field. Not that there was any
special brilliancy either--nothing near as sharp as I have seen of
keen winter nights, but a curious general luminousness throughout
to sight, sense, and soul. The latter had much to do with it. (I am
convinced there are hours of Nature, especially of the atmosphere,
mornings and evenings, address'd to the soul. Night transcends, for
that purpose, what the proudest day can do.) Now, indeed, if never
before, the heavens declared the glory of God. It was to the full sky
of the Bible, of Arabia, of the prophets, and of the oldest poems.
There, in abstraction and stillness, (I had gone off by myself to
absorb the scene, to have the spell unbroken,) the copiousness, the
removedness, vitality, loose-clear-crowdedness, of that stellar
concave spreading overhead, softly absorb'd into me, rising so free,
interminably high, stretching east, west, north, south--and I, though
but a point in the centre below, embodying all.

As if for the first time, indeed, creation noiselessly sank into and
through me its placid and untellable lesson, beyond--O, so infinitely
beyond!--anything from art, books, sermons, or from science, old or
new. The spirit's hour--religion's hour--the visible suggestion of God
in space and time--now once definitely indicated, if never again. The
untold pointed at--the heavens all paved with it. The Milky Way, as if
some superhuman symphony, some ode of universal vagueness, disdaining
syllable and sound--a flashing glance of Deity, address'd to the
soul. All silently--the indescribable night and stars--far off and
silently.

THE DAWN.--_July 23_.--This morning, between one and two hours before
sunrise, a spectacle wrought on the same background, yet of quite
different beauty and meaning. The moon well up in the heavens,
and past her half, is shining brightly--the air and sky of that
cynical-clear, Minerva-like quality, virgin cool--not the weight
of sentiment or mystery, or passion's ecstasy indefinable--not the
religious sense, the varied All, distill'd and sublimated into one, of
the night just described. Every star now clear-cut, showing for
just what it is, there in the colorless ether. The character of the
heralded morning, ineffably sweet and fresh and limpid, but for
the esthetic sense alone, and for purity without sentiment. I have
itemized the night--but dare I attempt the cloudless dawn? (What
subtle tie is this between one's soul and the break of day? Alike, and
yet no two nights or morning shows ever exactly alike.) Preceded by an
immense star, almost unearthly in its effusion of white splendor, with
two or three long unequal spoke-rays of diamond radiance, shedding
down through the fresh morning air below--an hour of this, and then
the sunrise.

THE EAST.--What a subject for a poem! Indeed, where else a more
pregnant, more splendid one? Where one more idealistic-real, more
subtle, more sensuous-delicate? The East, answering all lands, all
ages, peoples; touching all senses, here, immediate, now--and yet so
indescribably far off--such retrospect! The East--long-stretching--so
losing itself--the orient, the gardens of Asia, the womb of history
and song--forth-issuing all those strange, dim cavalcades--Florid with
blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion. Sultry with perfume,
with ample and flowing garment. With sunburnt visage, intense soul and
glittering eyes. Always the East--old, how incalculably old! And yet
here the same--ours yet, fresh as a rose, to every morning, every life,
to-day--and always will be.

_Sept. 17_. Another presentation--same theme--just before sunrise
again, (a favorite hour with me.) The clear gray sky, a faint glow
in the dull liver-color of the east, the cool fresh odor and the
moisture--the cattle and horses off there grazing in the fields--the
star Venus again, two hours high. For sounds, the chirping of crickets
in the grass, the clarion of chanticleer, and the distant cawing of an
early crow. Quietly over the dense fringe of cedars and pines rises
that dazzling, red, transparent disk of flame, and the low sheets of
white vapor roll and roll into dissolution.

THE MOON.--_May 18_.--I went to bed early last night, but found myself
waked shortly after 12, and, turning awhile, sleepless and mentally
feverish, I rose, dress'd myself, sallied forth and walk'd down the
lane. The full moon, some three or four hours up--a sprinkle of light
and less-light clouds just lazily moving--Jupiter an hour high in
the east, and here and there throughout the heavens a random star
appearing and disappearing. So beautifully veiled and varied--the air,
with that early-summer perfume, not at all damp or raw--at times
Luna languidly emerging in richest brightness for minutes, and then
partially envelop'd again. Far off a poor whip-poor-will plied his
notes incessantly. It was that silent time between 1 and 3.

The rare nocturnal scene, how soon it sooth'd and pacified me! Is
there not something about the moon, some relation or reminder, which
no poem or literature has yet caught? (In very old and primitive
ballads I have come across lines or asides that suggest it.) After a
while the clouds mostly clear'd, and as the moon swam on, she carried,
shimmering and shifting, delicate color-effects of pellucid green and
tawny vapor. Let me conclude this part with an extract, (some writer
in the "Tribune," May 16, 1878):

No one ever gets tired of the moon. Goddess that she is by dower of
her eternal beauty, she is a true woman by her tact--knows the charm
of being seldom seen, of coming by surprise and staying but a little
while; never wears the same dress two nights running, nor all night
the same way; commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her
usefulness, and makes her uselessness adored by poets, artists, and
all lovers in all lands; lends herself to every symbolism and to
every emblem; is Diana's bow and Venus's mirror and Mary's throne;
is a sickle, a scarf, an eyebrow, his face or her face, and look'd
at by her or by him; is the madman's hell, the poet's heaven, the
baby's toy, the philosopher's study; and while her admirers follow
her footsteps, and hang on her lovely looks, she knows how to keep
her woman's secret--her other side--unguess'd and unguessable.

_Furthermore. February 19, 1880_.--Just before 10 P.M. cold and
entirely clear again, the show overhead, bearing southwest, of
wonderful and crowded magnificence. The moon in her third quarter
--the clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades, with the planet Mars
between--in full crossing sprawl in the sky the great Egyptian X,
(Sirius, Procyon, and the main stars in the constellations of the
Ship, the Dove, and of Orion;) just north of east Bootes, and in his
knee Arcturus, an hour high, mounting the heaven, ambitiously large
and sparkling, as if he meant to challenge with Sirius the stellar
supremacy.

With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights I get all
the free margins and indefiniteness of music or poetry, fused in
geometry's utmost exactness.

STRAW-COLOR'D AND OTHER PSYCHES

_Aug. 4_.--A pretty sight! Where I sit in the shade--a warm day, the
sun shining from cloudless skies, the forenoon well advanc'd--I look
over a ten-acre field of luxuriant clover-hay, (the second crop)--the
livid-ripe red blossoms and dabs of August brown thickly spotting
the prevailing dark-green. Over all flutter myriads of light-yellow
butterflies, mostly skimming along the surface, dipping and
oscillating, giving a curious animation to the scene. The beautiful,
spiritual insects! straw-color'd Psyches! Occasionally one of them
leaves his mates, and mounts, perhaps spirally, perhaps in a straight
line in the air, fluttering up, up, till literally out of sight. In
the lane as I came along just now I noticed one spot, ten feet square
or so, where more than a hundred had collected, holding a revel, a
gyration-dance, or butterfly good-time, winding and circling, down and
across, but always keeping within the limits. The little creatures
have come out all of a sudden the last few days, and are now very
plentiful. As I sit outdoors, or walk, I hardly look around without
somewhere seeing two (always two) fluttering through the air in
amorous dalliance. Then their inimitable color, their fragility,
peculiar motion--and that strange, frequent way of one leaving the
crowd and mounting up, up in the free ether, and apparently never
returning. As I look over the field, these yellow-wings everywhere
mildly sparkling, many snowy blossoms of the wild carrot gracefully
bending on their tall and taper stems--while for sounds, the distant
guttural screech of a flock of guinea-hens comes shrilly yet somehow
musically to my ears. And now a faint growl of heat-thunder in the
north--and ever the low rising and falling wind-purr from the tops of
the maples and willows.

_Aug. 20_.--Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of the
bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd,)
continue to flit to and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown,
purple--now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings
like artists' palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast of
the pond I notice many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle
capricious flight. Near where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed topt
with a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects
alight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time. By-and-by
a humming-bird visits the same, and I watch him coming and going,
daintily balancing and shimmering about. These white butterflies give
new beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of the August foliage, (we
have had some copious rains lately,) and over the glistening bronze of
the pond-surface. You can tame even such insects; I have one big and
handsome moth down here, knows and comes to me, likes me to hold him
up on my extended hand.

_Another Day, later_.--A grand twelve-acre field of ripe cabbages with
their prevailing hue of malachite green, and floating-flying over and
among them in all directions myriads of these same white butterflies.
As I came up the lane to-day I saw a living globe of the same, two or
three feet in diameter, many scores cluster'd together and rolling
along in the air, adhering to their ball-shape, six or eight feet
above the ground.

A NIGHT REMEMBRANCE

_Aug. 23, 9-10 A.M._--I sit by the pond, everything quiet, the broad
polish'd surface spread before me--the blue of the heavens and the
white clouds reflected from it--and flitting across, now and then,
the reflection of some flying bird. Last night I was down here with
a friend till after midnight; everything a miracle of splendor--the
glory of the stars, and the completely rounded moon--the passing
clouds, silver and luminous-tawny--now and then masses of vapory
illuminated scud--and silently by my side my dear friend. The shades
of the trees, and patches of moonlight on the grass--the softly
blowing breeze, and just-palpable odor of the neighboring ripening
corn--the indolent and spiritual night, inexpressibly rich, tender,
suggestive--something altogether to filter through one's soul, and
nourish and feed and soothe the memory long afterwards.

WILD FLOWERS

This has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans
of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the
water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter'd in
profusion over the fields. An eight-petal'd blossom of gold-yellow,
clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large
as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I
noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then
there is a beautiful weed cover'd with blue flowers, (the blue of the
old Chinese teacups treasur'd by our grand-aunts,) I am continually
stopping to admire--a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful.
White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken
of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues and
beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-opened scrub-oak
and dwarf cedar hereabout--wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding
the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in all
their bloom. The tree-leaves, too, some of them are beginning to turn
yellow or drab or dull green. The deep wine-color of the sumachs and
gum-treesis already visible, and the straw-color of the dog-wood and
beech. Let me give the names of some of these perennial blossoms and
friendly weeds I have made acquaintance with hereabout one season or
another in my walks:

wild azalea, dandelions
wild honeysuckle, yarrow,
wild roses, coreopsis,
golden rod, wild pea,
larkspur, woodbine,
early crocus, elderberry,
sweet flag, (great patches of it,) poke-weed,
creeper, trumpet-flower, sun-flower,
scented marjoram, chamomile,
snakeroot, violets,
Solomon's seal, clematis,
sweet balm, bloodroot
mint, (great plenty,) swamp magnolia,
wild geranium, milk-weed,
wild heliotrope, wild daisy, (plenty,)
burdock, wild chrysanthemum.

A CIVILITY TOO LONG NEGLECTED

The foregoing reminds me of something.

As the individualities I would mainly portray have certainly been
slighted by folks who make pictures, volumes, poems, out of them--as
a faint testimonial of my own gratitude for many hours of peace and
comfort in half-sickness, (and not by any means sure but they will
somehow get wind of the compliment,) I hereby dedicate the last half
of these Specimen Days to the

bees, glow-worms, (swarming millions
black-birds, of them indescribably
dragon-flies, strange and beautiful at night
pond-turtles, over the pond and creek,)
mulleins, tansy, peppermint, water-snakes,
moths, (great and little, some crows,
splendid fellows,) millers,
mosquitoes, cedars,
butterflies, tulip-trees, (and all other trees,)
wasps and hornets, and to the spots and memories
cat-birds, (and all other birds,) of those days, and the creek.

DELAWARE RIVER--DAYS AND NIGHTS

_April 5, 1879_.-With the return of spring to the skies, airs, waters
of the Delaware, return the sea-gulls. I never tire of watching their
broad and easy flight, in spirals, or as they oscillate with slow
unflapping wings, or look down with curved beak, or dipping to the
water after food. The crows, plenty enough all through the winter,
have vanish'd with the ice. Not one of them now to be seen. The
steamboats have again come forth--bustling up, handsome, freshly
painted, for summer work--the Columbia, the Edwin Forrest, (the
Republic not yet out,) the Reybold, Nelly White, the Twilight, the
Ariel, the Warner, the Perry, the Taggart, the Jersey Blue--even the
hulky old Trenton--not forgetting those saucy little bull-pups of the
current, the steamtugs.

But let me bunch and catalogue the affair--the river itself, all the
way from the sea--Cape island on one side and Henlopen light on the
other--up the broad bay north, and so to Philadelphia, and on further
to Trenton;--the sights I am most familiar with, (as I live a good
part of the time in Camden, I view matters from that outlook)--the
great arrogant, black, full-freighted ocean steamers, inward
or outward bound--the ample width here between the two cities,
intersected by Windmill island--an occasional man-of-war, sometimes a
foreigner, at anchor, with her guns and port-holes, and the boats,
and the brown-faced sailors, and the regular oar-strokes, and the gay
crowds of "visiting day"--the frequent large and handsome three-masted
schooners, (a favorite style of marine build, hereabout of late
years,) some of them new and very jaunty, with their white-gray sails
and yellow pine spars--the sloops dashing along in a fair wind--(I
see one now, coming up, under broad canvas, her gaff-topsail shining
in the sun, high and picturesque--what a thing of beauty amid the sky
and waters!)--the crowded wharf-slips along the city--the flags of
different nationalities, the sturdy English cross on its ground of
blood, the French tricolor, the banner of the great North German
empire, and the Italian and the Spanish colors--sometimes, of an
afternoon, the whole scene enliven'd by a fleet of yachts, in a half
calm, lazily returning from a race down at Gloucester;--the
neat, rakish, revenue steamer "Hamilton" in mid-stream, with her
perpendicular stripes flaunting aft--and, turning the eyes north, the
long ribands of fleecy-white steam, or dingy-black smoke, stretching
far, fan-shaped, slanting diagonally across from the Kensington or
Richmond shores, in the west-by-south-west wind.

SCENES ON FERRY AND RIVER--LAST WINTER'S NIGHTS

Then the Camden ferry. What exhilaration, change, people, business, by
day. What soothing, silent, wondrous hours, at night, crossing on the
boat, most all to myself--pacing the deck, alone, forward or aft. What
communion with the waters, the air, the exquisite _chiaroscuro_--the
sky and stars, that speak no word, nothing to the intellect, yet so
eloquent, so communicative to the soul. And the ferry men--little they
know how much they have been to me, day and night--how many spells
of listlessness, ennui, debility, they and their hardy ways have
dispell'd. And the pilots--captains Hand, Walton, and Giberson by day,
and captain Olive at night; Eugene Crosby, with his strong young arm
so often supporting, circling, convoying me over the gaps of the
bridge, through impediments, safely aboard. Indeed all my ferry
friends--captain Frazee the superintendent, Lindell, Hiskey, Fred
Rauch, Price, Watson, and a dozen more. And the ferry itself, with its
queer scenes--sometimes children suddenly born in the waiting-houses
(an actual fact--and more than once)--sometimes a masquerade party,
going over at night, with a band of music, dancing and whirling like
mad on the broad deck, in their fantastic dresses; sometimes the
astronomer, Mr. Whitall, (who posts me up in points about the stars
by a living lesson there and then, and answering every question)
--sometimes a prolific family group, eight, nine, ten, even twelve!
(Yesterday, as I cross'd, a mother, father, and eight children,
waiting in the ferry-house, bound westward somewhere.)

I have mention'd the crows. I always watch them from the boats. They
play quite a part in the winter scenes on the river, by day. Their
black splatches are seen in relief against the snow and ice everywhere
at that season--sometimes flying and flapping--sometimes on little or
larger cakes, sailing up or down the stream. One day the river was
mostly clear--only a single long ridge of broken ice making a narrow
stripe by itself, running along down the current for over a mile,
quite rapidly. On this white stripe the crows were congregated,
hundreds of them--a funny procession--("half mourning" was the comment
of some one.)

Then the reception room, for passengers waiting--life illustrated
thoroughly. Take a March picture I jotted there two or three weeks
since. Afternoon, about 3-1/2 o'clock, it begins to snow. There has
been a matinee performance at the theater--from 4-1/2 to 5 comes a
stream of homeward bound ladies. I never knew the spacious room to
present a gayer, more lively scene--handsome, well-drest Jersey women
and girls, scores of them, streaming in for nearly an hour--the
bright eyes and glowing faces, coming in from the air--a sprinkling
of snow on bonnets or dresses as they enter--the five or ten minutes'
waiting--the chatting and laughing--(women can have capital
times among themselves, with plenty of wit, lunches, jovial
abandon)--Lizzie, the pleasant-manner'd waiting-room woman--for sound,
the bell-taps and steam-signals of the departing boats with their
rhythmic break and undertone--the domestic pictures, mothers with
bevies of daughters, (a charming sight)--children, countrymen--the
railroad men in their blue clothes and caps--all the various
characters of city and country represented or suggested. Then outside
some belated passenger frantically running, jumping after the boat.
Towards six o' clock the human stream gradually thickening--now a
pressure of vehicles, drays, piled railroad crates--now a drove of
cattle, making quite an excitement, the drovers with heavy sticks,
belaboring the steaming sides of the frighten'd brutes. Inside
the reception room, business bargains, flirting, love-making,
_eclaircissements_, proposals--pleasant, sober-faced Phil coming in
with his burden of afternoon papers--or Jo, or Charley (who jump'd
in the dock last week, and saved a stout lady from drowning,) to
replenish the stove, and clearing it with long crow-bar poker.

Besides all this "comedy human," the river affords nutriment of a
higher order. Here are some of my memoranda of the past winter, just
as pencill'd down on the spot.

_A January Night_.--Fine trips across the wide Delaware to-night. Tide
pretty high, and a strong ebb. River, a little after 8, full of
ice, mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timber'd
steamboat hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlight
they spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as far
as I can see. Bumping, trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousand
snakes, the tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, affording
a grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor
indescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in the
night. Never did I realize more latent sentiment, almost _passion_, in
those silent interminable stars up there. One can understand, such a
night, why, from the days of the Pharaohs or Job, the dome of heaven,
sprinkled with planets, has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism
on human pride, glory, ambition.

_Another Winter Night_.--I don't know anything more _filling_ than
to be on the wide firm deck of a powerful boat, a clear, cool,
extra-moonlight night, crushing proudly and resistlessly through this
thick, marbly, glistening ice. The whole river is now spread with it
--some immense cakes. There is such weirdness about the scene--partly
the quality of the light, with its tinge of blue, the lunar twilight
--only the large stars holding their own in the radiance of the moon.
Temperature sharp, comfortable for motion, dry, full of oxygen. But
the sense of power--the steady, scornful, imperious urge of our strong
new engine, as she ploughs her way through the big and little cakes.

_Another_.--For two hours I cross'd and recross'd, merely for
pleasure--for a still excitement. Both sky and river went through
several changes. The first for awhile held two vast fan-shaped
echelons of light clouds, through which the moon waded, now radiating,
carrying with her an aureole of tawny transparent brown, and now
flooding the whole vast with clear vapory light-green, through which,
as through an illuminated veil, she moved with measur'd womanly
motion. Then, another trip, the heavens would be absolutely clear,
and Luna in all her effulgence. The big Dipper in the north, with the
double star in the handle much plainer than common. Then the
sheeny track of light in the water, dancing and rippling. Such
transformations; such pictures and poems, inimitable.