Walt Whitman

LEAVES OF GRASS
(1891-92 issue)
complete book, e-book

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To You

 Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
 I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,
 Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
 troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
 Your true soul and body appear before me.
 They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
 farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
 suffering, dying.
 
 Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
 I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
 I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
 
 O I have been dilatory and dumb,
 I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
 I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing
 but you.
 
 I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
 None has understood you, but I understand you,
 None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
 None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
 None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent
 to subordinate you,
 I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
 beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
 
 Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,
 From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light,
 But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus
 of gold-color'd light,
 From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
 effulgently flowing forever.
 
 O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
 You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself
 all your life,
 Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
 What you have done returns (...)
(......)