1855

 

Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass, exposing himself to attack by numerous critics. Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, wrote to tell the author, “I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” (Halleck, 391) 

Whitman will write as late as 1888, that “from a worldly and business point of view, Leaves of Grass has been worse than a failure – that public criticism on the book and myself as author of it yet shows mark’d anger and contempt more than anything else.” (387)   

Halleck himself was more put off than pleased by Leaves of Grass, noting in 1911, that Whitman 

thought that genuine realism forbade his being selective and commanded him to put everything in his verse. he accordingly included some offensive material which was outside the pale of poetic treatment. Had he followed the same rule with his cooking, his chickens would have been served to him without removing the feathers. (390)

Whitman around this time.
 

In The New Yorker, June 24, 2019, Peter Schjeldahl describes the poem, “The Sleepers,” in which “Whitman eavesdrops on the slumber of multitudes, dead and alive, and interweaves dreams of his own. At one point Whitman joins a merry company of spirits, of whom he says, ‘I reckon I am their boss, and they make me their pet besides.’” 

“Whitman invented a poetry specific to this language [American English] and open to the kinds of experience, peculiar to democracy in a polyethnic society on a vast continent, that might otherwise be mute,” he notes. 

Whitman was the second of nine children, born on a Long Island farm. His father “struggled in various lines of work.” The family moved to Brooklyn in 1830, and at 11, Walt went to work. In his off hours he was “an insatiable reader, haunting libraries.” In the 1830s he tried teaching, unhappily. He edited the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, starting in 1846, a prestigious paper. He was fired in 1848 due to his radical free-soil and anti-slavery politics. In 1855 he published the first of nine editions of Leaves of Grass. Seven years later, he traveled south to find his brother, George, who had been wounded in the Battle of Fredericksburg. He worked as a nurse the rest of the war, predicting, “The real war will never get in the books.” 

In a poem in 1856, Whitman wrote of the “divine-souled African, large, fine-headed, nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!” In later years, Schjeldahl notes, Whitman referred to blacks as “baboons” and “wild brutes.” He had “imbibed a version of Social Darwinism that predicted the decline of nonwhite peoples, Asians sometimes excepted.” 

 

The Sleepers

By Walt Whitman

 

1 

I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping

     and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of

     sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted,

     contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

 

How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their

     cradles.

The wretched features of ennuyes, the white

     features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards,

     the sick-gray faces of onanists,
The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their

     strong-door’d rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-

     born emerging
from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
The night pervades them and infolds them.

 

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he

     with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with

     her palm on the hip of the husband,
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully

     wrapt.

 

The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway

     son sleeps,
The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does

     he sleep?
And the murder’d person, how does he sleep?

 

The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day

     sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all

     sleep.

 

I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-

     suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches

     from them,
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.

 

Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not

     the earth is beautiful.

I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the

     other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other

     dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.

 

I am a dance—play up there! the fit is whirling me

     fast!

I am the ever-laughing—it is new moon and twilight,
I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts

     whichever way I look,
Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea,

     and where it is neither ground nor sea.

 

Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,
Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not

     if they could,
I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet

     besides,
And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I

     walk,
To lift their cunning covers to signify me with

     stretch’d arms, and resume the way;
Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards!

     with mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants

     of joy!

I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood

     in the box,
He who has been famous and he who shall be famous

     after to-day,
The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted

     or feeble person.

 

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair

     expectantly,
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

 

Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go

     without him.

 

I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself

     to the dusk.

 

He whom I call answers me and takes the place of

     my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.

 

Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was

     sweaty and panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

 

My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all

     directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you

     are journeying.

 

Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he

     are one,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.

 

2 

I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
Perfume and youth course through me and I am

     their wake.

 

It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old

     woman’s,
I sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn

     my grandson’s stockings.

 

It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the

     winter midnight,
I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid

     earth.

 

A shroud I see and I am the shroud, I wrap a body

     and lie in the coffin,
It is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain

     here, it is blank here, for reasons.

 

(It seems to me that every thing in the light and air

     ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let

     him know he has enough.)

 

3 

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked

     through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he

     strikes out with courageous arms, he urges

     himself with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him

     head-foremost on the rocks.

 

What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him

     in the prime of his middle age?

 

Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his

     strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they

     bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn

     him,
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it

     is continually bruis’d on rocks,
Swiftly and ought of sight is borne the brave corpse.

 

4 

I turn but do not extricate myself,
Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness

     yet.

 

The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-

     guns sound,
The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering

     through the drifts.

I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear

     the burst as she strikes, I hear the howls of

     dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.

 

I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and

     freeze upon me.

 

I search with the crowd, not one of the company is

     wash’d to us alive,
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them

     in rows in a barn.

 

5 

Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the

     intrench’d hills amid a crowd of officers.
His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the

     weeping drops,
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch’d

     from his cheeks,
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves

     confided to him by their parents.

 

The same at last and at last when peace is declared,
He stands in the room of the old tavern, the well-

     belov’d soldiers all pass through,
The officers speechless and slow draw near in their

     turns,
The chief encircles their necks with his arm and

     kisses them on the cheek,
He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he

     shakes hands and bids good-by to the army.

 

6 

Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at

     dinner together,
Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home

     with her parents on the old homestead.

A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old

     homestead,
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-

     bottoming chairs,
Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-

     envelop’d her face,
Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded

     exquisitely as she spoke.

 

My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the

     stranger,
She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face and

     full and pliant limbs,
The more she look’d upon her she loved her,
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty

     and purity,
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the

     fireplace, she cook’d food for her,
She had no work to give her, but she gave her

     remembrance and fondness.

 

The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the

     middle of the afternoon she went away,
O my mother was loth to have her go away,
All the week she thought of her, she watch’d for her

     many a month,
She remember’d her many a winter and many a

     summer,
But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there

     again.

 

7 

A show of the summer softness—a contact of

     something unseen—an amour of the light and air,
I am jealous and overwhelm’d with friendliness,
And will go gallivant with the light and air myself.

 

O love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me,
Autumn and winter are in the dreams, the farmer

     goes with his thrift,
The droves and crops increase, the barns are well-

     fill’d.

 

Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the

     dreams,
The sailor sails, the exile returns home,
The fugitive returns unharm’d, the immigrant is back

     beyond months and years,
The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his

     childhood with the well known neighbors and

     faces,
They warmly welcome him, he is barefoot again, he

     forgets he is well off,
The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman

     and Welshman voyage home, and the native of

     the Mediterranean voyages home,
To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-

     fill’d ships,
The Swiss foots it toward his hills, the Prussian goes

     his way, the Hungarian his way, and the Pole his

     way,
The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian

     return.

The homeward bound and the outward bound,
The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuye, the onanist,

     the female that loves unrequited, the money-

     maker,
The actor and actress, those through with their parts

     and those waiting to commence,
The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the

     voter, the nominee that is chosen and the

     nominee that has fail’d,
The great already known and the great any time

     after to-day,
The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form’d, the

      homely,
The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat

      and sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury,

      the audience,
The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight

      widow, the red squaw,
The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that

      is wrong’d,
The antipodes, and every one between this and them

      in the dark,
I swear they are averaged now—one is no better than

      the other,
The night and sleep have liken’d them and restored

      them.

 

I swear they are all beautiful,
Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the

      dim light is beautiful,
The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.

 

Peace is always beautiful,
The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

 

The myth of heaven indicates the soul,
The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it

     appears less, it comes or it lags behind,
It comes from its embower’d garden and looks

     pleasantly on itself and encloses the world,
Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and

     perfect and clean the womb cohering,
The head well-grown proportion’d and plumb, and

     the bowels and joints proportion’d and plumb.

 

The soul is always beautiful,
The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its

     place,
What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall

     be in its place,
The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood

     waits,
The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long,

     and the child of the drunkard waits long, and the

     drunkard himself waits long,
The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far

     advanced are to go on in their turns, and the far

     behind are to come on in their turns,
The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall

     flow and unite—they unite now.

 

8 

The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from

     east to west as they lie unclothed,
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the

     European and American are hand in hand,
Learn’d and unlearn’d are hand in hand, and male

     and female are hand in hand,
The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of

     her lover, they press close without lust, his lips

     press her neck,
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his

     arms with measureless love, and the son holds

     the father in his arms with measureless love,
The white hair of the mother shines on the white

     wrist of the daughter,
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the

     man, friend is inarm’d by friend,
The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses

     the scholar, the wrong’d made right,
The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and

     the master salutes the slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane

     becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is

     reliev’d,
The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was

     unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive

     are resumed, the poor distress’d head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as

     ever, and smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become

     supple,
The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to

     themselves in condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night and the

     chemistry of the night, and awake.

 

I too pass from the night,
I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again

     and love you.

 

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by

     you,
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in

     whom I lay so long,
I know not how I came of you and I know not where

     I go with you, but
I know I came well and shall go well.

 

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise

     betimes,
I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly

     return to you.

 

* 

McMaster notes: “In 1855 Know-nothing governors and legislatures were elected in eight states, and heavy votes polled in six more.” (97-336)