Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO WALT WHITMAN, by TOM MACINNES


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO WALT WHITMAN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hello there, walt!
Last Line: Forever on their own!
Subject(s): Admiration; Language; Poetry & Poets; Praise; Whitman, Walt (1819-1891); Writing & Writers; Words; Vocabulary


1

Hello there, Walt!
Out of sight on the old Highway
I hear your song:
I hear the words that you have said for me:
I, a sayer of words, sing out hello to you:
And you are not so very far ahead but you will hear my words also.

2

Words, Walt, words!
Your words, anybody's words, and the words of the rolling worlds!
But under all the one Word never uttered.

3

O comrade mine!
Accepting all, eager for all, taking no denial!
Good-will shines in you, through you, from you,
Splendid as the sun!

4

O eagle-eyed! O Titan-heart!
I look with you to the heights of old philosophies:
Looking above and beyond them, shouting ahoy
To wonders weaving out of Wonder endless in the still Eterne!

5

But mostly, Walt,
I watch you saunter down with huge, rejoicing tread,
Tramping America:
Noting New York and its enormity:
Swinging an axe in the Oregon forests:
Bellowing songs to the sea.

6

Your catalogs I read unedified:
Your lines that lumber humorless as Jewish genealogy:
Your divine average is not divine:
And for all your rant and brag about your States, who cares?
But the coming of the lilacs, Walt,
And the call of mating birds,
And the smell of June, with its berries,
And the feel of the harvest air,
And supple-bodied youth, and clean red blood, and the ripe, white quiver of the
grown girl's breast,
And all the easy, common joys of life to be had for the asking,
The beautiful, bountiful flow of things in every land:
Simple, copious, unrestrained forever:
The sky and the stars and the winds of God, and the lovely faces behind the
masque of Death:—
For chanting these my hat goes off to you,
Old stalwart out of days primeval,
Earth-born and generous!

7

Down South:
And the tide is coming in:
I watch you fishing from the edge of the old dock:
And a darky sitting by you in the sunshine:
I listen to your lazy chat:
Careless there, happy, smoking a corn-cob pipe:
Blowing blue incense up to the round blue sky:
Breathing the absolute now.

8

O but the Ocean played great tunes for you in octaves run too deep
For your dull-eared compatriots to hear!

9

I tell you, Walt,
The world lies sick for want of men like you!
Resistant, unconforming, singular,
Against the moulding and compression of the average:
Against the drag to the level, and the blatherskite commune.

10

Here's to you, Walt!
To you, and all good tramps of Adam following!
Singing at sun-up through the morning air,
Free of all stifling unions,
Striking the trail of the great companions,
Forever on their own!





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