Three Whitman Songs

1
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;
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;
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,
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.) 
  
2
Keep your splendid, silent sun;
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!
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;)
-- 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;
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.

A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them -- ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, -- seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form'd -- till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage,/
   must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, /
   incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
...For my enemy is dead -- a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin -- I draw near;
[I bend]1 down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.