object:1.whitman - Myself And Mine
author class:Walt Whitman
subject class:Poetry
book class:Whitman - Poems
class:chapter
MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heatto take good aim with a gunto sail a
boatto manage horsesto beget superb children,
To speak readily and clearlyto feel at home among common people,
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea.
Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderersI welcome them also
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.
Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and
talking.
Let me have my own way;
Let others promulge the lawsI will make no account of the laws;
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peaceI hold up agitation
and conflict;
I praise no eminent manI rebuke to his face the one that was
thought most worthy.
(Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of,
all your life?
Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your
life?)
(And who are youblabbing by rote, years, pages, languages,
reminiscences,
Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak a single word?)
Let others finish specimensI never finish specimens;
I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and modern
continually.
I give nothing as duties;
What others give as duties, I give as living impulses;
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)
Let others dispose of questionsI dispose of nothingI arouse
unanswerable questions;
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?
What about these likes of myself, that draw me so close by tender
directions and indirections?
I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but
listen to my enemiesas I myself do;
I charge you, too, forever, reject those who would expound mefor I
cannot expound myself;
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me;
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.
After me, vista!
O, I see life is not short, but immeasurably long;
I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a
steady grower,
Every hour the semen of centuriesand still of centuries.
I will follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth;
I perceive I have no time to lose.
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