Complete Prose Works

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The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light
of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing
can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry
on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all
subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very
uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and
insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of
the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the
flawless triumph of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it
you have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of all nations
and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over
the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall
leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun
journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward,
with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great
poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts and
things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of
himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not
have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang
in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing
hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for
precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or
soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as
regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from
my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by
my side and look in the mirror with me.

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be
proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease
through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits
him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers,
savans, musicians, inventors and artists, nothing is finer than
silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems,
philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art,
an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is
greatest for ever and ever who contributes the greatest original
practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no
sphere worthy of itself, and makes one.

The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on
equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than
you, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did
you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any
more than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good
or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them.
What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments,
and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the
elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and the
throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that
something in the soul which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread master
here and everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of the
shatter of the sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of all
terror and all pain.

The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, and
for encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or
secrecy, glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night and
day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall be
riches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent man
is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees
by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American
bard shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the
strata of interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most,
nor the body most--and not be for the Eastern States more than the
Western, or the Northern States more than the Southern.

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the
greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset
and remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, and
braced him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings.
The sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer,
geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and
lexicographer, are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and
their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No
matter what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conception
of it--of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If
there shall be love and content between the father and the son, and
if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of
the father, there shall be love between the poet and the man of
demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are henceforth the tuft
and final applause of science.

Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation
of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here
swells the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. The
depths are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness
are resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of
the supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of
it, departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, and
whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They are
sufficient for any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or
retarded--any special miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in
the vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass, and
the frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them,
are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and each
distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality
of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more
divine than men and women.

Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as they
are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this
basis philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever
regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never
inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane
philosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that--whatever is less than
the laws of light and of astronomical motion--or less than the laws
that follow the thief, the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through
this life and doubtless afterward--or less than vast stretches of
time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving of
strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system
of philosophy as contending against some being or influence, is also
of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterize the great master
--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing
to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the
mass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape
comes common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that
is to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably
great, and that all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance,
is greater than to conceive children, and bring them up well--that to
_be_ is just as great as to perceive or tell.

In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest
more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty.
They out of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided,
and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing
can warp or degrade it.

As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real
body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves,
facts are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more
volatile light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes
deeper many fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or
process exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its
--the carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd
clean-shap'd New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams
with unmatch'd beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of
government gleam with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions
and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all
interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first
principles. They are of use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and
riches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall not
realize or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the library
is not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and paid for
it. Any one and every one is owner of the library, (indeed he or she
alone is owner,) who can read the same through all the varieties of
tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and
make supple and powerful and rich and large.

These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shall
receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not
permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns of
woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes,
or to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns of
ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that
which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or
places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form
especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of
ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornaments
can be allow'd that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and
that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from
it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are
most beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in
human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'd
only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public
every day. Great genius and the people of these States must never be
demean'd to romances. As soon as histories are properly told, no more
need of romances.

The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and
by the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be
forgiven of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of us
lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world,
and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth
gather'd itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication
attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and
that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole
republic of states, a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and
despised--and that the soul has never once been fool'd and never can
be fool'd--and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a
foetid puff--and there never grew up in any of the continents of the
globe, nor upon any planet or satellite, nor in that condition which
precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of
life, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any
process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct
hated the truth.

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large
hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large
alimentiveness and destuctiveness and causality, with a perfect sense
of the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied
to human affairs, are called up of the float of the brain of the world
to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's
womb, and from her birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes far
enough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen
who applied himself to solid gains, and did well for himself and for
his family, and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The
greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies
of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he
gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the
gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of
it, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of
a little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clap-boards
around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil own'd, and the
easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the
melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man
is, to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all their
scorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and
underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors, or shameless
stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of the bloom and odor
of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, and
of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in
youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at
the close of a life without elevation or naivety, (even if you have
achiev'd a secure 10,000 a year, or election to Congress or the
Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or
majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization and forethought,
blotching the surface and system which civilization undeniably drafts,
and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads
with such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the soul.

Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The
prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'd
life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little and
large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable
for immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year,
or seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and
coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich
presents, and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can
look, in every direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul is
of itself--all else has reference to what ensues. All that a person
does or thinks is of consequence. Nor can the push of charity or
personal force ever be anything else' than the profoundest reason,
whether it brings argument to hand or no. No specification is
necessary--to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big,
learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well,
from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration
out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and
benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the
unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope of it
forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving
and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own
case or any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment day, divides
not the living from the dead, or the righteous from the unrighteous,
is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by its
correlative, and knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement.

The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If
he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
tides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him is
not open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and
locations and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is
the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and
infiniteness in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the
ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from
what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of
this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of
the wave--let him merge in the general run, and wait his development.

Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The
prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer
or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them?
Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction
of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of
tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the
right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long
after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the
young woman think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old
think of him?

A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and
complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as
a man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a
man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could
sit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with
explanations, and realize, and be content and full? To no such
terminus does the greatest poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor
shelter'd fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells in
action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions
previously unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space
and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead
vacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos
--the elder encourages the younger and shows him how--they two shall
launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for
itself, and looks unabash'd on the lesser orbits of the stars, and
sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again.

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to
defend immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty,
or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in
America, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.

The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a
race who through all change of circumstance was never without the
idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has
attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant
tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect
of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races,
and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth,
faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness,
amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that
shall wellnigh express the inexpressible.

No great literature, nor any like style of behavior or oratory, or
social intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions,
or the treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail,
or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts,
or police or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can
long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards.
Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it
throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart,
after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform
with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions?
Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large,
well united, proud, beyond the old models, generous beyond all models?
Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the
sea for use to me to-day here? I know that what answers for me, an
American, in Texas, Ohio, Canada, must answer for any individual or
nation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? Is it
for the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readily
with the sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of the Mother of
Many Children?

America prepares with Composure and good-will for the visitors that
have sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and
welcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the
statesman, the erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in their
place and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. It
rejects none, it permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it
advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has
the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and
wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of
its poets.

PREFACE, 1872 To As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free Now Thou Mother with
thy Equal Brood, _in permanent edition_.

The impetus and ideas urging me, for some years past, to an utterance,
or attempt at utterance, of New World songs, and an epic of Democracy,
having already had their publish'd expression, as well as I can expect
to give it, in "Leaves of Grass," the present and any future pieces
from me are really but the surplusage forming after that volume,
or the wake eddying behind it. I fulfill'd in that an imperious
conviction, and the commands of my nature as total and irresistible
as those which make the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of this
supplementary volume, I confess I am not so certain. Having from early
manhood abandon'd the business pursuits and applications usual in my
time and country, and obediently yielded myself up ever since to the
impetus mention'd, and to the work of expressing those ideas, it may
be that mere habit has got dominion of me, when there is no real need
of saying anything further. But what is life but an experiment? and
mortality but an exercise? with reference to results beyond. And so
shall my poems be. If incomplete here, and superfluous there, _n'
importe_--the earnest trial and persistent exploration shall at least
be mine, and other success failing shall be success enough. I have
been more anxious, anyhow, to suggest the songs of vital endeavor and
manly evolution, and furnish something for races of outdoor athletes,
than to make perfect rhymes, or reign in the parlors. I ventur'd
from the beginning my own way, taking chances--and would keep on
venturing.

I will therefore not conceal from any persons, known or unknown to
me, who take an interest in the matter, that I have the ambition of
devoting yet a few years to poetic composition. The mighty present
age! To absorb and express in poetry, anything of it--of its world
--America--cities and States--the years, the events of our Nineteeth
century--the rapidity of movement--the violent contrasts, fluctuations
of light and shade, of hope and fear--the entire revolution made by
science in the poetic method--these great new underlying facts and new
ideas rushing and spreading everywhere;--truly a mighty age! As if in
some colossal drama, acted again like those of old under the open sun,
the Nations of our time, and all the characteristics of Civilization,
seem hurrying, stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering,
closing up, toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement.
Not to conclude the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil and
happiness and sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd from
oldest, worst incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternal
play anew, and under happier, freer auspices. To me, the United States
are important because in this colossal drama they are unquestionably
designated for the leading parts, for many a century to come. In them
history and humanity seem to seek to culminate. Our broad areas are
even now the busy theatre of plots, passions, interests, and suspended
problems, compared to which the intrigues of the past of Europe, the
wars of dynasties, the scope of kings and kingdoms, and even the
development of peoples, as hitherto, exhibit scales of measurement
comparatively narrow and trivial. And on these areas of ours, as on a
stage, sooner or later, something like an _eclairissement_ of all the
past civilization of Europe and Asia is probably to be evolved.

The leading parts. Not to be acted, emulated here, by us again, that
role till now foremost in history--not to become a conqueror nation,
or to achieve the glory of mere military, or diplomatic, or commercial
superiority--but to become the grand producing land of nobler men and
women--of copious races, cheerful, healthy, tolerant, free--to become
the most friendly nation, (the United States indeed)--the modern
composite nation, form'd from all, with room for all, welcoming all
immigrants--accepting the work of our own interior development, as
the work fitly filling ages and ages to come;--the leading nation of
peace, but neither ignorant nor incapable of being the leading nation
of war;--not the man's nation only, but the woman's nation--a land of
splendid mothers, daughters, sisters, wives.