Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (84 page)

The 1891-1892 Edition of
Leaves of Grass
is also not a “complete” edition, simply because Whitman dropped earlier poems and pieces of poems along the way. Why did he do so? The most obvious answer is that Whitman recognized the poorer quality of certain pieces; at other times, however, the older poet seems to have had second thoughts about an earlier opinion or feeling. In the interest of providing a more nuanced view of the poet’s work, this selection includes the poems that appeared in one or more editions of Whitman’s poems but were omitted by Whitman from the culminating edition of
Leaves of Grass.
In other words, these are poems that might “fall through the cracks” for readers acquainted only with Whitman’s two best-known collections.

Whitman’s friend and literary executor Horace Traubel records this 1891 conversation in the preface to
Old Age Echoes,
a collection of thirteen poems added to the 1897 Edition of
Leaves of Grass.
Whitman, who died in 1892, did not see or approve of this collection; in fact, Traubel seems to have changed some of the titles himself. But Traubel does claim that it was one of Whitman’s final wishes to “collect a lot of prose and poetry pieces—small or smallish mostly, but a few larger—appealing to the good will, the heart—sorrowful ones not rejected—but no morbid ones given.”

The thirteen works date from 1855 to Whitman’s actual death bed (Traubel noted that “A Thought of Columbus” was Whitman’s “last deliberate composition”) and range in quality from sketches for longer projects (“Then Shall Perceive”) to carefully revised works (“Supplement Hours”) and even a few previously published poems (such as “A Kiss to the Bride” and “Death’s Valley”).

 

—Karen Karbiener

POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE 1855

This breast which now alternate burns
With flashing hope, and gloomy fear,
Where beats a heart that knows the hue
Which aching bosoms wear;

 

This curious frame of human mould,
Where craving wants unceasing play
The troubled heart and wondrous form
Must both alike decay,

 

Then cold wet earth will close around
Dull, senseless limbs, and ashy face,
But where, O Nature! where will be
My mind’s abiding place?

 

Will it ev’n live? For though its light
Must shine till from the body torn;
Then, when the oil of life is spent,
Still shall the taper burn?

 

O, powerless is this struggling brain
To pierce the mighty mystery;
In dark, uncertain awe it waits
The common doom—to die!

Mortal! and can thy swelling soul
Live with the thought that all its life
Is centred in this earthly cage
Of care, and tears, and strife?

 

Not so; that sorrowing heart of thine
Ere long will find a house of rest;
Thy form, re-purified, shall rise,
In robes of beauty drest.

 

The flickering taper’s glow shall change
To bright and starlike majesty,
Radiant with pure and piercing light
From the Eternal’s eye!

O, many a panting, noble heart
Cherishes in its deep recess
Th’ hope to win renown o‘er earth
From Glory’s priz’d caress.

 

And some will reach that envied goal,
And have their fame known far and wide;
And some will sink unnoted down
In dark Oblivion’s tide.

 

But I, who many a pleasant scheme
Do sometimes cull from Fancy’s store,
With dreams, such as the youthful dream,
Of grandeur, love, and power—

 

Shall I build up a lofty name,
And seek to have the nations know
What conscious might dwells in the brain
That throbs aneath this brow?

And have thick countless ranks of men
Fix upon
me
their reverent gaze,
And listen to the deafening shouts,
To
me
that thousands raise?

 

Thou foolish soul! the very place
That pride has made for folly’s rest;
What thoughts with vanity all rife,
Fill up this heaving breast!

 

Fame, O what happiness is lost
In hot pursuit of thy false glare!
Thou, whose drunk votaries die to gain
A puff of viewless air.

 

So, never let me more repine,
Though I live on obscure, unknown,
Though after death unsought may be
My markless resting stone.

 

For mighty one and lowly wretch,
Dull, idiot mind, or teeming sense
Must sleep on the same earthy couch,
A hundred seasons hence.

Not in a gorgeous hall of pride,
Mid tears of grief and friendship’s sigh,
Would I, when the last hour has come,
Shake off this crumbling flesh and die.

 

My bed I would not care to have
With rich and costly stuffs hung round;
Nor watched with an officious zeal.
To keep away each jarring sound.

Amidst the thunder crash of war,
Where hovers Death’s ensanguined cloud,
And bright swords flash, and banners fly,
Above the sickening sight of blood.

 

Not there—not there, would I lay down
To sleep with all the firm and brave;
For death in such a scene of strife,
Is not the death that I do crave.

 

But when the time for my last look
Upon this glorious earth should come,
I’d wish the season warm and mild,
The sun to shine, and flowers bloom.

 

Just ere the closing of the day,
My dying couch I then would have
Borne out in the refreshing air,
Where sweet shrubs grow and proud trees wave

 

The still repose would calm my mind,
And lofty branches overhead,
Would throw around this grassy bank,
A cooling and a lovely shade.

 

At distance through the opening trees,
A bay by misty vapours curled,
I’d gaze upon, and think the haven
For which to leave this fleeting world.

 

To the wide winds I’d yield my soul,
And die there in that pleasant place,
Looking on water, sun, and hill,
As on their Maker’s very face.

 

I’d want no human being near;
But at the setting of the sun,
I’d bid adieu to earth, and step
Down to the Unknown World—alone.

When old Grimes died, he left a son—
The graft of worthy stock;
In deed and word he shows himself
A chip of the old block.

 

In youth, ‘tis said, he liked not school—
Of tasks he was no lover;
He wrote sums in a ciphering book,
Which had a pasteboard cover.

 

Young Grimes ne‘er went to see the girls
Before he was fourteen;
Nor smoked, nor swore, for that he knew
Gave Mrs. Grimes much pain.

 

He never was extravagant
In pleasure, dress, or board;
His Sunday suit was of blue cloth,
At six and eight a yard.

 

But still there is, to tell the truth,
No stinginess in him;
And in July he wears an old
Straw hat with a broad brim.

 

No devotee in fashion’s train
Is good old Grimes’s son;
He sports no cane—no whiskers wears,
Nor lounges o‘er the town.

 

He does not spend more than he earns
In dissipation’s round;
But shuns with care those dangerous rooms
Where sin and vice abound.

 

It now is eight and twenty years
Since young Grimes saw the light;
And no house in the land can show
A fairer, prouder sight.

 

For there his wife, prudent and chaste,
His mother’s age made sweet,
His children trained in virtue’s path,
The gazer’s eye will meet.

 

Upon a hill, just off the road
That winds the village side,
His farm house stands, within whose door
Ne‘er entered Hate or Pride.

 

But Plenty and Benevolence
And Happiness are there—
And underneath that lowly roof
Content smiles calm and fair.

 

Reader, go view the cheerful scene—
By it how poor must prove
The pomp, and tinsel, and parade,
Which pleasure’s followers love.

 

Leave the wide city’s noisy din—
The busy haunts of men—
And here enjoy a tranquil life,
Unvexed by guilt or pain.

Before the dark-brow’d sons of Spain,
A captive Indian maiden stood;
Imprison’d where the moon before
Her race as princes trod.

 

The rack had riven her frame that day—
But not a sigh or murmur broke
Forth from her breast; calmly she stood,
And sternly thus she spoke:—

 

“The glory of Peru is gone;
Her proudest warriors in the fight—
Her armies, and her Inca’s power
Bend to the Spaniard’s might.

 

“And I—a Daughter of the Sun—
Shall I ingloriously still live?
Shall a Peruvian monarch’s child
Become the white lord’s slave?

 

“No: I’d not meet my father’s frown
In the free spirit’s place of rest,
Nor seem a stranger midst the bands
Whom Manitou has blest.”

 

Her snake-like eye, her cheek of fire,
Glowed with intenser, deeper hue;
She smiled in scorn, and from her robe
A poisoned arrow drew.

 

“Now, paleface see! the Indian girl
Can teach thee how to bravely die:
Hail! spirits of my kindred slain,
A sister ghost is nigh!”

 

Her hand was clenched and lifted high—
Each breath, and pulse, and limb was still’d;
An instant more the arrow fell:
Thus died the Inca’s child.

O, beauteous is the earth! and fair
The splendors of Creation are:
Nature’s green robe, the shining sky,
The winds that through the tree-tops sigh,
All speak a bounteous God.

 

The noble trees, the sweet young flowers,
The birds that sing in forest bowers,
The rivers grand that murmuring roll,
And all which joys or calms the soul
Are made by gracious might.

 

The flocks and droves happy and free,
The dwellers of the boundless sea,
Each living thing on air or land,
Created by our Master’s hand,
Is formed for joy and peace.

 

But man—weak, proud, and erring man,
Of truth ashamed, of folly vain—
Seems singled out to know no rest
And of all things that move, feels least
The sweets of happiness.

 

Yet he it is whose little life
Is passed in useless, vexing strife,
And all the glorious earth to him
Is rendered dull, and poor, and dim,
From hope unsatisfied.

 

He faints with grief—he toils through care—
And from the cradle to the bier
He wearily plods on—till Death
Cuts short his transient, panting breath,
And sends him to his sleep.

O, mighty powers of Destiny!
When from this coil of flesh I’m free—
When through my second life I rove,
Let me but find one heart to love,
As I would wish to love:

 

Let me but meet a single breast,
Where this tired soul its hope may rest,
In never-dying faith: ah, then,
That would be bliss all free from pain,
And sickness of the heart.

 

For vainly through this world below
We seek affection. Nought but wo
Is with our earthly journey wove;
And so the heart must look above,
Or die in dull despair.