To You
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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 already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
mockeries, what is their return?)
The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from
yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully
to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
the songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense
and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
picks its way.
Literature Network >> Walt Whitman >> Leaves of Grass >> To You
About Walt Whitman
Text
Summary
Book 1 - Inscriptions
One's-Self I Sing
As I Ponder'd in Silence
In Cabin'd Ships at Sea
To Foreign Lands
To a Historian
To Thee Old Cause
Eidolons
For Him I Sing
When I Read the Book
Beginning My Studies
Beginners
To the States
On Journeys Through the States
To a Certain Cantatrice
Me Imperturbe
Savantism
The Ship Starting
I Hear America Singing
What Place Is Besieged?
Still Though the One I Sing
Shut Not Your Doors
Poets to Come
To You
Thou Reader
Book II
Starting from Paumanok
Book III
Song of Myself
Book IV - Children of Adam
To the Garden the World
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
I Sing the Body Electric
A Woman Waits for Me
Spontaneous Me
One Hour to Madness and Joy
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
Ages and Ages
We Two
O Hymen! O Hymenee!
I Am He
Native Moments
Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City
I Heard You
Facing West from California's Shores
As Adam Early in the Morning
Book V - Calamus
In Paths Untrodden
Scented Herbage of My Breast
Whoever You Are
For You, O Democracy
These I Singing in Spring
From My Ribb'd Breast Only
Of the Terrible Doubt
Metaphysics
Recorders Ages Hence
Close of the Day
Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
Roots and Leaves
Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
Trickle Drops
City of Orgies
Behold This Swarthy Face
Louisiana
To a Stranger
This Moment
I Hear It Was Charged
The Prairie-Grass
When I Persue the Conquer'd Fame
We Two Boys
A Promise to California
Here the Frailest
No Labor-Saving Machine
A Glimpse
A Leaf
Earth, My Likeness
I Dream'd in a Dream
What Think You
To the East and to the West
Sometimes with One I Love
To a Western Boy
Fast Anchor'd
Among the Multitude
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
That Shadow My Likeness
Full of Life Now
Book VI
Salut au Monde!
Book VII
Song of the Open Road
Book VIII
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Book IX
Song of the Answerer
Book X
Our Old Feuillage
Book XI
A Song of Joys
Book XII
Song of the Broad-Axe
Book XIII
Song of the Exposition
Book XIV
Song of the Redwood-Tree
Book XV
A Song for Occupations
Book XVI
A Song of the Rolling Earth
Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
Book XVII - Birds of Passage
Song of the Universal
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
To You
France
Myself and Mine
Year of Meteors
With Antecedents
Book XVIII
A Broadway Pageant
Book XIX - Sea-Drift
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life
Tears
To the Man-of-War-Bird
Aboard at a Ship's Helm
On the Beach at Night
The World below the Brine
On the Beach at Night Alone
Song for All Seas, All Ships
Patroling Barnegat
After the Sea-Ship
Book XX - By the Roadside
A Boston Ballad
Europe
A Hand-Mirror
Gods
Germs
Thoughts
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Perfections
O Me! O Life!
To a President
I Sit and Look Out
To Rich Givers
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Roaming in Thought
A Farm Picture
A Child's Amaze
The Runner
Beautiful Women
Mother and Babe
Thought
Visor'd
Thought
Gliding O'er all
Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
Thought
To Old Age
Locations and Times
Offerings
To The States
Book XXI - Drum Taps
First O Songs for a Prelude
Eighteen Sixty-One
Beat! Beat! Drums!
From Paumanok
Song of the Banner at Daybreak
Rise O Days
Virginia--The West
City of Ships
The Centenarian's Story
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
Bivouac on a Mountain Side
An Army Corps on the March
By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame
Come Up from the Fields Father
Vigil Strange
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest
A Sight in Camp
As Toilsome I Wander'd
Not the Pilot
Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me
The Wound-Dresser
Long, Too Long America
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
Dirge for Two Veterans
Over the c*****e Rose Prophetic a Voice
I Saw Old General at Bay
The Artilleryman's Vision
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
Not Youth Pertains to Me
Race of Veterans
World Take Good Notice
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
Look Down Fair Moon
Reconciliation
How Solemn As One by One
As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap
Delicate Cluster
To a Certain Civilian
Lo, Victress on the Peaks
Spirit Whose Work Is Done
Adieu to a Soldier
Turn O Libertad
To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod
Book XXII - Memories of President Lincoln
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
O Captain! My Captain!
Hush'd Be the CampsTo-Day
This Dust Was Once the Man
Book - XXIII
By Blue Ontario's Shore
Reversals
Book XXIV - Autumn Rivulets
As Consequent, Etc.
The Return of the Heroes
There Was a Child Went Forth
Old Ireland
The City Dead-House
This Compost
To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire
Unnamed Land
Song of Prudence
The Singer in the Prison
Warble for Lilac-Time
Outlines for a Tomb
Out from Behind This Mask
Vocalism
To Him That Was Crucified
You Felons on Trial in Courts
Laws for Creations
To a Common Prostitute
I Was Looking a Long While
Thought
Miracles
Sparkles from the Wheel
To a Pupil
Unfolded out of the Folds
What Am I After All
Kosmos
Others May Praise What They Like
Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
Tests
The Torch
O Star of France
The Ox-Tamer
An Old Man's Thought of School
Wandering at Morn
Italian Music in Dakota
With All Thy Gifts
My Picture-Gallery
The Prairie States
Book XXV
Proud Music of the Storm
Book XXVI
Passage to India
Book XXVII
Prayer of Columbus
Book XXVIII
The Sleepers
Transpositions
Book XXIX
To Think of Time
Book XXX - Whispers of Heavenly Death
Darest Thou Now O Soul
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Chanting the Square Deific
Of Him I Love Day and Night
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
As If a Phantom Caress'd Me
Assurances
Quicksand Years
That Music Always Round Me
What Ship Puzzled at Sea
A Noiseless Patient Spider
O Living Always, Always Dying
To One Shortly to Die
Night on the Prairies
Thought
The Last Invocation
As I Watch the Ploughman
Pensive and Faltering
Book XXXI
Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
A Paumanok Picture
Book XXXII - From Noon to Starry Night
Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling
Faces
The Mystic Trumpeter
To a Locomotive in Winter
O Magnet-South
Mannahatta
All Is Truth
A Riddle Song
Excelsior
Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
Thoughts
Mediums
Weave in, My Hardy Life
Spain, 1873-74
By Broad Potomac's Shore
From Far Dakota's Canyons
Old War-Dreams
Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
What Best I See in Thee
Spirit That Form'd This Scene
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
A Clear Midnight
Book XXXIII - Songs of Parting
As the Time Draws Nigh
Years of the Modern
Ashes of Soldiers
Thoughts
Song at Sunset
As at Thy Portals Also Death
My Legacy
Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
Camps of Green
The Sobbing of the Bells
As They Draw to a Close
Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
The Untold Want
Portals
These Carols
Now Finale to the Shore
So Long!
Book XXXIV - Sands at Seventy
Mannahatta
Paumanok
From Montauk Point
To Those Who've Fail'd
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
The Bravest Soldiers
A Font of Type
As I Sit Writing Here
My Canary Bird
Queries to My Seventieth Year
The Wallabout Martyrs
The First Dandelion
America
Memories
To-Day and Thee
After the Dazzle of Day
Abraham Lincoln
Out of May's Shows Selected
Halcyon Days
Fancies at Navesink
Election Day, November, 1884
With Husky-Haughty Lips
Death of General Grant
Red Jacket (From Aloft)
Washington's Monument
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
Broadway
To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
Old Salt Kossabone
The Dead Tenor
Continuities
Yonnondio
Life
"Going Somewhere"
Small the Theme of My Chant
True Conquerors
The United States to Old World Critics
The Calming Thought of All
Thanks in Old Age
Life and Death
The Voice of the Rain
Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here
While Not the Past Forgetting
The Dying Veteran
Stronger Lessons
A Prairie Sunset
Twenty Years
Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
Twilight
You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
The Dead Emperor
As the Greek's Signal Flame
The Dismantled Ship
Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
An Evening Lull
Old Age's Lambent Peaks
After the Supper and Talk
Book XXXV - Good-bye My Fancy
Sail out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!
Lingering Last Drops
Good-Bye My Fancy
On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
MY 71st Year
Apparitions
The Pallid Wreath
An Ended Day
Old Age's Ship & Crafty Death's
To the Pending Year
Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher
Long, Long Hence
Bravo, Paris Exposition!
Interpolation Sounds
To the Sun-Set Breeze
Old Chants
A Christmas Greeting
Sounds of the Winter
A Twilight Song
When the Full-Grown Poet Came
Osceola
A Voice from Death
A Persian Lesson
The Commonplace
"The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete"
Mirages
L. of G.'s Purport
The Unexpress'd
Grand Is the Seen
Unseen Buds
Good-Bye My Fancy!
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