Classic Poem

In a little house pictures I keep, many pictures hanging suspended — It is not a fixed house,
It is round — it is but a few inches from one side of it to the other side,
But behold! it has room enough — in it, hundreds and thousands, — all the varieties;
— Here! do you know this? This is cicerone himself;
And here, see you, my own States — and here the world itself, bowling through the air;
rolling
And there, on the walls hanging, portraits of women and men, carefully kept,
This is the portrait of my dear mother — and this of my father — and these of my brothers and sisters;
This, (I name every thing as it comes,) This is a beautiful statute, long lost, dark buried, but never destroyed — now found by me, and restored to the light;
There five men, a group of sworn friends, stalwart, bearded, determined, work their way together through all the troubles and impediments of the world;
And that is a magical wondrous mirror — long it lay clouded, but the cloud has passed away,
It is now a clean and bright mirror — it will show you all you can conceive of, all you wish to behold;
And that is a picture intended for Death — it is very beautiful — (what else is so beautiful as Death?)
There is represented the Day, full of effulgence — full of seminal lust and love — full of action, life, strength, aspiration,
And there the Night, with mystic beauty, full of love also, and full of greater life — the Night, showing where the stars are;
There is a picture of Adam in Paradise — side by side with him Eve, (the Earth's bride and the Earth's bridegroom;)
There is an old Egyptian temple — and again, a Greek temple, of white marble;
There are Hebrew prophets chanting, rapt, extatic — and here is Homer;
Here is one singing canticles in an unknown tongue, before the Sanskrit was,
And here a Hindu sage, with his recitative in Sanskrit;
And here the divine Christ expounds eternal truth — expounds the Soul,
And here he appears en-route to Calvary, bearing the cross — See you, the blood and sweat streaming down his face, his neck;
And here, behold, a picture of once imperial Rome, full of palaces — full of masterful warriors;
And here, the questioner, the Athenian of the classical time — Socrates, in the market place,
(O divine tongue! I too grow silent under your elenchus,
O you with bare feet, and bulging belly! I saunter along, following you, and obediently listen;)
And here Athens itself, — it is a clear forenoon,
Young men, pupils, collect in the gardens of a favorite master, waiting for him.
Some, crowded in groups, listen to the harangues or arguments of the elder ones,
Elsewhere, single figures, undisturbed by the buzz around them, lean against pillars, or within recesses, meditating, or studying from manuscripts,
Here and there, couples or trios, young and old, clear-faced, and of perfect physique, walk with twined arms, in divine friendship, happy,
Till, beyond, the master appears advancing — his form shows above the crowd, a head taller than they,
His gait is erect, calm and dignified — his features are colossal — he is old, yet his forehead has no wrinkles,
Wisdom undisturbed, self-respect, fortitude unshaken, are in his expression, his personality;
Wait till he speaks — what God's voice is that, sounding from his mouth?
He places virtue and self-denial above all the rest,
He shows to what a glorious height the man may ascend,
He shows how independent one may be of fortune — how triumphant over fate;
— And here again, this picture tells a story of the Olympic games,
See you, the chariot races? See you, the boxers boxing, and the runners running?
See you, the poets off there reciting their poems and tragedies, to crowds of listeners?
— And here, (for I have all kinds,) here is Columbus setting sail from Spain on his voyage of discovery;
This again is a series after the great French revolution,
This is the taking of the Bastile, the prison — this is the execution of the king.
This is the queen on her way to the scaffold — those are guillotines;
But this opposite, (abruptly changing,) is a picture from the prison-ships of my own old city — Brooklyn city;
And now a merry recruiter passes, with fife and drum, seeking who will join his troop;
And there is an old European martyrdom — See you, the cracking fire — See the agonized contortions of the limbs, and the writhing of the lips! See the head thrown back;
And here is a picture of triumph — a General has returned, after a victory — the city turns out to meet him,
And here is a portrait of the English king, Charles the First, (are you a judge of physiognomy?)
And here is a funeral procession in the country,
A beloved daughter is carried in her coffin — there follow the parents and neighbors;
And here, see you — here walks the Boston truckman, by the side of his string-team — see the three horses, pacing stately, sagacious, one ahead of another;
— And this — whose picture is this?
Who is this, with rapid feet, curious, gay — going up and down Manahatta, through the streets, along the shores, working his way through the crowds, observant and singing?
And this head of melancholy Dante, poet of penalties — poet of hell;
But this is a portrait of Shakespear, limner of feudal European lords (here are my hands, my brothers — one for each of you;)
— And there are wood-cutters, cutting down trees in my north east woods — see you, the axe uplifted;
And that is a picture of a fish-market — see there the shad, flat-fish, the large halibut, — there a pile of lobsters, and there another of oysters;
Opposite, a drudge in the kitchen, working, tired — and there again the laborer, in stained clothes, sour-smelling, sweaty — and again black persons and criminals;
And there the frivolous person — and there a crazy enthusiast — and there a young man lies sick of a fever, and is soon to die;
This, again, is a Spanish bull-fight — see, the animal with bent head, fiercely advancing;
And here, see you, a picture of a dream of despair, ( — is it unsatisfied love?)
Phantoms, countless, men and women, after death, wandering;
And there are flowers and fruits — see the grapes, decked off with vine-leaves;
But see this! — see where graceful and stately the young queen-cow walks at the head of a large drove, leading the rest;
And there are building materials — brick, lime, timber, paint, glass, and iron, (so now you can build what you like;)
And this black portrait — this head, huge, frowning, sorrowful — is Lucifer's portrait — the denied God's portrait,
(But I do not deny him — though cast out and rebellious, he is my God as much as any;)
And again the heads of three other Gods — the God Beauty, the God Beneficence, and the God Universality, (they are mine, also;)
And there an Arab caravan, halting — See you, the palm trees, the camels, and the stretch of hot sand far away;
And there are my woods of Kanada, in winter, with ice and snow,
And here my Oregon hunting-hut, See me emerging from the door, bearing my rifle in my hand;
But there, see you, a reminiscence from over sea — a very old Druid, walking the woods of Albion;
And there, singular, on ocean waves, downward, buoyant, swift, over the waters, an occupied coffin floating;
And there, rude grave-mounds in California — and there a path worn in the grass,
And there hang painted scenes from my Kansas life — and there from what I saw in the Lake Superior region;
And here mechanics work in their shops, in towns — There the carpenter shoves his jack-plane — there the blacksmith stands by his anvil, leaning on his upright hammer;
This is Chicago with railroad depots, with trains arriving and departing — and, in their places, immense stores of grain, meat, and lumber;
And here are my slave-gangs, South, at work upon the roads, the women indifferently with the men — see, how clumsy, hideous, black, pouting, grinning, sly, besotted, sensual, shameless;
And this of a scene afar in the North, the arctic — those are the corpses of lost explorers, (no chaplets of roses will ever cap their icy graves — but I put a chaplet in this poem, for you, you sturdy English heros;)
But here, now copious — see you, here, the Wonders of eld, the famed Seven,
The Olympian statue this, and this the Artemesian tomb,
Pyramid this, Pharos this, and this the shrine of Diana,
These Babylon's gardens, and this Rhodes' high-lifted marvel,
(But for all that, nigh at hand, see a wonder beyond any of them,
Namely yourself — the form and thoughts of a man,
A man! because all the world, and all the inventions of the world are but the food of the body and the soul of one man;)
And here, while ages have grown upon ages,
Pictures of youths and greybeards, Pagan, and Jew, and Christian,
Some retiring to caves — some in schools and piled libraries,
To pore with ceaseless fervor over the myth of the Infinite,
But ever recoiling, Pagan and Jew and Christian,
As from a haze, more dumb and thick than vapor above the hot sea;
— And here now, (for all varieties, I say, hang in this little house,)
A string of my Iroquois, aborigines — see you, where they march in single file, without noise, very cautious, through passages in the old woods;
O a husking-frolic in the West — see you, the large rude barn — see you, young and old, laughing and joking, as they husk the ears of corn;
And there in a city, a stormy political meeting — a torch-light procession — candidates avowing themselves to the people;
And here is the Lascar I noticed once in Asia — here he remains still, pouring money into the sea, as an offering to demons, for favor;
And there, in the midst of a group, a quell'd revolted slave, cowering,
See you, the hand-cuffs, the hopple, and the blood-stain'd cowhide;
And there hang, side by side, certain close comrades of mine — a Broadway stage-driver, a lumberman of Maine, and a deck-hand of a Mississippi steamboat;
And again the young man of Mannahatta, the celebrated rough,
(The one I love well — let others sing whom they may — him I sing for a thousand years!)
And there a historic piece — see you, where Thomas Jefferson of Virginia sits reading Rousseau, the Swiss, and compiling the Declaration of Independence, the American compact;
And there, tall and slender, stands Ralph Waldo Emerson, of New England, at the lecturer's desk lecturing,
And there is my Congress in session in the Capitol — there are my two Houses in session;
And here, behold two war-ships, saluting each other — behold the smoke, bulging, spreading in round clouds from the guns and sometimes hiding the ships;
And there, on the level banks of the James river in Virginia stand the mansions of the planters;
And here an old black man, stone-blind, with a placard on his hat, sits low at the corner of a street, begging, humming hymn-tunes nasally all day to himself and receiving small gifts;
And this, out at sea, is a signal-bell — see you, where it is built on a reef, and ever dolefully keeps tolling, to warn mariners;
And this picture shows what once happened in one of Napoleon's greatest battles,
(The tale was conveyed to me by an old French soldier,)
In the height of the roar and carnage of the battle, all of a sudden, from some unaccountable cause, the whole fury of the opposing armies subdued — there was a perfect calm,
It lasted almost a minute — not a gun was fired — all was petrified,
It was more solemn and awful than all the roar and slaughter;
— And here, (for still I name them as they come,) here are my timber-towers, guiding logs down a stream in the North;
And here a glimpse of my treeless llanos, where they skirt the Colorado, and sweep for a thousand miles on either side of the Rocky Mountains;
And there, on the whaling ground, in the Pacific, is a sailor, perched at the top-mast head, on the look out,
(You can almost hear him crying out, There-e-'s white water , or The-e-re's black skin ;)
But here, (look you well,) see here the phallic choice of America, a full-sized man or woman — a natural, well-trained man or woman
(The phallic choice of America leaves the finesse of cities, and all the returns of commerce or agriculture, and the magnitude of geography, and achievements of literature and art, and all the shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the breeding of full-sized men, or one full-sized man or woman, unconquerable and simple;)
— For all those have I in a round house hanging — such pictures have I — and they are but little.
For wherever I have been, has afforded me superb pictures,
And whatever I have heard has given me perfect pictures,
And every hour of the day and night has given me copious pictures,
And every rod of land or sea affords me, as long as I live, inimitable pictures.