110

Leaves of Grass

WE TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING

WE two boys together clinging,

One the other never leaving,

Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions
making,

Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,

Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,

No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thiev-
ing, threatening,

Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drink-
ing, on the turf of the sea-beach dancing,

Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,

Fulfilling our foray.

A PROMISE TO CALIFORNIA

A PROMISE to California,

Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget Sound
and Oregon;

Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to
remain, to teach robust American love,

For I know very well that I and robust love belong among
you, inland, and along the Western sea;

For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and
I will also.

HERE THE FRAILEST LEAVES OF ME

HERE the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,

Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose
them,

And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

NO LABOUR-SAVING MACHINE

No labour-saving machine,

Nor discovery have I made,

Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to
found a hospital or library,

Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,

Nor literary success nor intellect, nor book for the book-shelf,

But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,

For comrades and lovers.

Calamus

109

But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the
destruction of them?)

Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of
these States inland and seaboard,

And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or
large that dents the water,

Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

## THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING

THE prairie-grass dividing, its special odour breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,

Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,

Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,

Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and
command, leading not following,

Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and
lusty flesh clear of taint,

Those that look carelessly in the faces of presidents and governors, as to say, Who are you?

Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never
obedient,

Those of inland America.

## WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUER'D FAME

WHEN I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories
of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,

Nor the President in his presidency, nor the rich in his great
house,

But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was
with them,

How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging,
long and long,

Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering,
how affectionate and faithful they were,

Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest envy.