of his character. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to
the sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting-rooms, soldiers
to the frontier. Thus events grow on the same stem with persons; are
sub-persons. The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it,
and not according to the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. We know
what madness belongs to love--what power to paint a vile object in hues of
heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, and other
accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd
acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to
strange company and work. Each creature puts forth from itself its own
condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the
pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and
the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as
brave as the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of
perspiration--gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and
avarice.
A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his
magnetisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate; but we
are examples. "_Quisque suos patimur manes._" The tendency of every man to
enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that
the efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us
into it; and I have noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his
position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on his
merits.
A man will see his character emitted in the events that seem to meet, but
which exude from and accompany him. Events expand with the character. As
once he found himself among toys, so now he plays a part in colossal
systems, and his growth is declared in his ambition, his companions, and
his performance. He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of
causation--the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into the gap he fills.
Hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and performance,
an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, churches,
ways of living, and society, of that town. If you do not chance to meet
him, all that you see will leave you a little puzzled: if you see him, it
will become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built New Bedford, who
built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and
many another noisy mart. Each of these men, if they were transparent,
would seem to you not so much men, as walking cities, and, wherever you
put them, they would build one.
History is the action and reaction of these two,--Nature and Thought,--two
boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement. Everything is
pusher or pushed: and matter and mind are in perpetual tilt and balance
so. Whilst the man is weak, the earth takes him up. He plants his brain
and affections. By-and-by he will take up the earth, and have his gardens
and vineyards in the beautiful order and productiveness of his thought.
Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of
the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind. If the wall
remain adamant, it accuses the want of thought. To a subtler force, it
will stream into new forms, expressive of the character of the mind.
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous
materials, which have obeyed the will of some man? The granite was
reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. Iron was deep in the
ground, and well combined with stone, but could not hide from his fires.
Wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and sea,
in vain. Here they are, within the reach of every man's day-labor--what he
wants of them.
The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the
poles or points where it would build. The races of men rise out of the
ground preoccupied with a thought which rules them, and divided into
parties ready armed and angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction.
The quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the Roman, the
Austrian and the American. The men who come on the stage at one period are
all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air. We
are all impressionable, for we are made of them; all impressionable, but
some more than others, and these first express them. This explains the
curious contemporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in
the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all
will announce it a few minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are
the best index of the coming hour. So the great man, that is, the man most
imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man--of a fibre
irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He feels the infinitesimal
attractions. His mind is righter than others, because he yields to a
current so feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised.
The correlation is shown in defects. Moeller, in his "Essay on
Architecture," taught that the building which was fitted accurately to
answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been
intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and
pervasive: that a crudity in the blood will appear in the argument; a hump
in the shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. If his mind could
be seen, the hump would be seen. If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it
will run into his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his
fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as every man is hunted
by his own daemon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.
So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent,
bilious nature, has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that
fret my leaves. Such an one has curculios, borers, knife-worms: a swindler
ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then a smooth, plausible
gentleman, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
This correlation really existing can be divined. If the threads are there,
thought can follow and show them. Especially when a soul is quick and
docile; as Chaucer sings,--
Or if the soul of proper kind
Be so perfect as men find,
That it wot what is to come,
And that he warneth all and some,
Of every of their aventures,
By previsions or figures;
But that our flesh hath not might
It to understand aright,
For it is warned too darkly.
Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and
presage: they meet the person they seek: what their companion prepares to
say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of
what is about to befall.
Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the design, this
vagabond life admits. We wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year
after year we find two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend
a great part of their best time within a few feet of each other. And the
moral is, that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from
us; as Goethe said, "what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in
old age," too often cursed with the granting of our prayer; and hence the
high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to
ask only for high things.
One key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, one solution to
the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the
propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride
alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the
equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or
plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the
other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins,
and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and
a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or
is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his
relation to the universe which his ruin benefits. Leaving the daemon who
suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit
by his pain.
To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this
lesson--namely, that by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which is
throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the
divinity, in some form, to repay. A good intention clothes itself with
sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and
shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.
Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds nature and souls in
perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. I do
not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of
the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies;
that all is and must be pictorial; that the rainbow, and the curve of the
horizon, and the arch of the blue vault, are only results from the
organism of the eye. There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to
admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I
cannot look without seeing splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random
sparkle here or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of
beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central intention of nature
to be harmony and joy.
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we thought men were
free in the sense that in a single exception one fantastical will could
prevail over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand could
pull down the sun. If, in the least particular, one could derange the
order of nature--who would accept the gift of life?
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which secures that all is
made of one piece; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal
and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In astronomy is vast space,
but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day.
Why should we be afraid of nature, which is no other than "philosophy and
theology embodied"? Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements,
we who are made up of the same elements? Let us build to the Beautiful
Necessity, which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger
that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to the Necessity which
rudely or softly educates him to the perception that there are no
contingencies; that Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not
intelligent but intelligence,--not personal nor impersonal,--it disdains
words and passes understanding; it dissolves persons; it vivifies nature,
yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence.
WALT WHITMAN
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
II
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is
here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas'd, the illiterate
person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the
drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escap'd youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping
couple.
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town,
the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
III
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.
You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lin'd sides!
you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd facades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch'd you I believe you have imparted to yourselves,
and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces,
and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
IV
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not
wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the
road.
O highway I travel, do you say to me, _Do not leave me_?
Do you say, _Venture not--if you leave me you are lost_?
Do you say, _I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me_?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all free
poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me.
I think whoever I see must be happy.
V
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me I
would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
VI
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear'd it would not
astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority
and all argument against it).
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it
out of the soul.
Now I reexamine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied--he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love--if they are vacant of you, you are
vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion'd, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
VII
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd gates, ever
provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are
they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight
expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts
descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always
drop fruit as I pass.)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and
pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what gives
them to be free to mine?
VIII
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man
and woman
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of
the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually
out of itself).
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of
young and old,
From it falls distill'd the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering, longing ache of contact.
IX
Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and
incomprehensible at first.
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we
cannot remain here,
However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must not
anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
receive it but a little while.
X
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds
by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage--the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin'd bodies,
No diseas'd person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)
XI
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands
toward you.
XII
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road--they are the swift and majestic men--they are
the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of
children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years
each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and
well-grain'd manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
XIII
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they
tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass
it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however
long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor
or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle
of it,
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa,
and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits
of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward where-ever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to
gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them
behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments--all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners
before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of
the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and
sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best--toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and trimm'd
faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom,
everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
XIV
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
something to make a greater struggle necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm'd,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies,
desertions.
XV