130. Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun| GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; | |
| Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; | |
| Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; | |
| Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; | |
| Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; | 5 |
| Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; | |
| Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturb’d; | |
| Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire; | |
| Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life; | |
| Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears only; | 10 |
| Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities! | |
| —These, demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by the war-strife;) | |
| These to procure, incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, | |
| While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; | |
| Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets, | 15 |
| Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time, refusing to give me up; | |
| Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever faces; | |
| (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; | |
| I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.) | |
Keep your splendid, silent sun; | 20 |
| Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; | |
| Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards; | |
| Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum; | |
| Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs! | |
| Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand! | 25 |
| Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day! | |
| Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan! | |
| Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the trumpets and drums! | |
| (The soldiers in companies or regiments—some, starting away, flush’d and reckless; | |
| Some, their time up, returning, with thinn’d ranks—young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) | 30 |
| —Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships! | |
| O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied! | |
| The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! | |
| The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! | |
| The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following; | 35 |
| People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; | |
| Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; | |
| The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded;) | |
| Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes; | |
| Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. | 40 |
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass
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