Walt Whitman poem: To Working Men

W a l t   W h i t m a n

(1819-1892)

 

T o   w o r k i n g   m e n

 

1

Come closer to me;

Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;

Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.

 

This is unfinished business with me–How is it with you?

(I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)

 

Male and Female!

I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of

bodies and souls.

 

American masses!

I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me–I

know that it is good for you to do so.

 

2

This is the poem of occupations;

In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the

developments,

And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen!

Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me,

what would it amount to?

Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what

would it amount to?

Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

 

The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms;

A man like me, and never the usual terms.

 

Neither a servant nor a master am I;

I take no sooner a large price than a small price–I will have my own,

whoever enjoys me;

I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.

 

If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same

shop;

If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as

your brother or dearest friend;

If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be

personally as welcome;

If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;

If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot

remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds?

If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table;

If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her–why I often

meet strangers in the street, and love them.

 

Why, what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

Is it you that thought the President greater than you?

Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

 

Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief,

Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;

Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw

your name in print,

Do you give in that you are any less immortal?

 

3

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable

and untouching;

It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are

alive or no;

I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

 

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and

outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see,

And all else behind or through them.

 

The wife–and she is not one jot less than the husband;

The daughter–and she is just as good as the son;

The mother–and she is every bit as much as the father.

 

Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,

Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,

Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,

All these I see–but nigher and farther the same I see;

None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.

I bring what you much need, yet always have,

Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;

I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the

value itself.

 

There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;

It is not what is printed, preached, discussed–it eludes discussion and

print;

It is not to be put in a book–it is not in this book;

It is for you, whoever you are–it is no farther from you than your hearing

and sight are from you;

It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest–it is ever provoked by them.

 

You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it;

You may read the President’s Message, and read nothing about it there;

Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or

in the daily papers or the weekly papers,

Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of

stock.

 

4

The sun and stars that float in the open air;

The apple-shaped earth, and we upon it–surely the drift of them is

something grand!

I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is

happiness,

And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,

or reconnoissance,

And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and

without luck must be a failure for us,

And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

 

The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that

with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and

outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,

The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that

fill each minute of time for ever,

What have you reckoned them for, camerado?

Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a

store?

Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure, or a

lady’s leisure?

 

Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be

painted in a picture?

Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?

Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious

combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the

savans?

Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?

Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?

Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture

itself?

 

Old institutions–these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the

practice handed along in manufactures–will we rate them so high?

Will we rate our cash and business high?–I have no objection;

I rate them as high as the highest–then a child born of a woman and man I

rate beyond all rate.

 

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand;

I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are;

I am this day just as much in love with them as you;

Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth.

 

We consider Bibles and religions divine–I do not say they are not divine;

I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;

It is not they who give the life–it is you who give the life;

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they

are shed out of you.

 

5

When the psalm sings, instead of the singer;

When the script preaches, instead of the preacher;

When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the

supporting desk;

When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch

my body back again;

When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and child

convince;

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman’s

daughter;

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly

companions;

I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and

women like you.

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;

The President is there in the White House for you–it is not you who are

here for him;

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you–not you here for them;

The Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;

Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and

coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.

 

List close, my scholars dear!

All doctrines, all politics and civilisation, exsurge from you;

All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied

in you;

The gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is

in you this hour, and myths and tales the same;

If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?

The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be

vacuums.

 

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;

Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches

and cornices?

 

All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the

instruments;

It is not the violins and the cornets–it is not the oboe nor the beating

drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet

romanza–nor that of the men’s chorus, nor that of the women’s

chorus,

It is nearer and farther than they.

 

6

Will the whole come back then?

Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there

nothing greater or more?

Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul?

 

Strange and hard that paradox true I give;

Objects gross and the unseen Soul are one.

 

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;

Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-

dressing,

Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks

by flaggers,

The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,

Coal-mines, and all that is down there,–the lamps in the darkness, echoes,

songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through

smutched faces,

Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks–men around

feeling the melt with huge crowbars–lumps of ore, the due

combining of ore, limestone, coal–the blast-furnace and the

puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last–

the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean

shaped T-rail for railroads;

Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the

great mills and factories;

Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades, or window or door lintels–

the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum,

the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron–the kettle of boiling vault-

cement, and the fire under the kettle,

The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the

mould of the moulder, the working knife of the butcher, the ice-

saw, and all the work with ice,

The implements for daguerreotyping–the tools of the rigger, grappler,

sail-maker, block-maker,

Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colours, brushes, brush-making,

glaziers’ implements,

The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner’s ornaments, the decanter and

glasses, the shears and flat-iron,

The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and

stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal–the making of all sorts

of edged tools,

The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done by

brewers, also by wine-makers, also vinegar-makers,

Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling,

sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking–electro-plating,

electrotyping, stereotyping,

Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,

ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam waggons,

The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray;

Pyrotechny, letting off coloured fireworks at night, fancy figures and

jets,

Beef on the butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the

butcher in his killing-clothes,

The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder’s tub,

gutting, the cutter’s cleaver, the packer’s maul, and the plenteous

winter-work of pork-packing,

Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice–the barrels and the half

and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves

and levees,

The men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats,

canals;

The daily routine of your own or any man’s life–the shop, yard, store, or

factory;

These shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, your

daily life!

In that and them the heft of the heaviest–in them far more than you

estimated, and far less also;

In them realities for you and me–in them poems for you and me;

In them, not yourself–you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of

estimation;

In them the development good–in them, all themes and hints.

 

I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile–I do not advise you to stop;

I do not say leadings you thought great are not great;

But I say that none lead to greater than those lead to.

 

7

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,

In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,

In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place–not for another

hour, but this hour;

Man in the first you see or touch–always in friend, brother, nighest

neighbour–Woman in mother, sister, wife;

The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,

You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong

life,

And all else giving place to men and women like you.

Walt Whitman poem: To Working Men

 KEMP=MAG POETRY MAGAZINE

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