The Complete Poetry of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

      Faces (1855)

       Table of Contents

      Sauntering the pavement or riding the country byroad here then are faces,

       Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,

       The spiritual prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,

       The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges broad at the backtop,

       The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows . . . . the shaved blanched faces of orthodox citizens,

       The pure extravagant yearning questioning artist’s face,

       The welcome ugly face of some beautiful soul . . . . the handsome detested or despised face,

       The sacred faces of infants . . . . the illuminated face of the mother of many children,

       The face of an amour . . . . the face of veneration,

       The face as of a dream . . . . the face of an immobile rock,

       The face withdrawn of its good and bad . . a castrated face,

       A wild hawk . . his wings clipped by the clipper,

       A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

      Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then are faces;

       I see them and complain not and am content with all.

      Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finale?

      This now is too lamentable a face for a man;

       Some abject louse asking leave to be . . cringing for it,

       Some milknosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

      This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage;

       Snakes nest in that mouth . . I hear the sibilant threat.

      This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,

       Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

      This is a face of bitter herbs . . . . this an emetic . . . . they need no label,

       And more of the drugshelf . . laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s lard.

      This face is an epilepsy advertising and doing business . . . . its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,

       Its veins down the neck distend . . . . its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites,

       Its teeth grit . . the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in nails,

       The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.

      This face is bitten by vermin and worms,

       And this is some murderer’s knife with a halfpulled scabbard.

      This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,

       An unceasing deathbell tolls there.

      Those are really men! . . . . the bosses and tufts of the great round globe.

      Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and cadaverous march?

       Well then you cannot trick me.

      I see your rounded never-erased flow,

       I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

      Splay and twist as you like . . . . poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,

       You’ll be unmuzzled . . . . you certainly will.

      I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum,

       And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;

      I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,

       The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;

       And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,

       And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every inch as good as myself.

      The Lord advances and yet advances:

       Always the shadow in front . . . . always the reached hand bringing up the laggards.

      Out of this face emerge banners and horses . . . . O superb! . . . . I see what is coming,

       I see the high pioneercaps . . . . I see the staves of runners clearing the way,

       I hear victorious drums.

      This face is a lifeboat;

       This is the face commanding and bearded . . . . it asks no odds of the rest;

       This face is flavored fruit ready for eating;

       This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

      These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,

       They show their descent from the Master himself.

      Off the word I have spoken I except not one . . . . red white or black, all are deific,

       In each house is the ovum . . . . it comes forth after a thousand years.

      Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,

       Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me;

       I read the promise and patiently wait.

      This is a fullgrown lily’s face,

       She speaks to the limber-hip’d man near the garden pickets,

       Come here, she blushingly cries . . . . Come nigh to me limber-hip’d man and give me your finger and thumb,

       Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,

      Fill me with albescent honey . . . . bend down to me,

       Rub to me with your chafing beard . . rub to my breast and shoulders.

      The old face of the mother of many children:

       Whist! I am fully content.

      Lulled and late is the smoke of the Sabbath morning,

       It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,

       It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wildcherry and the catbrier under them.

      I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,

       I heard what the run of poets were saying so long,

       Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.

      Behold a woman!

       She looks out from her quaker cap . . . . her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky.

      She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,

       The sun just shines on her old white head.

      Her ample gown is of creamhued linen,

       Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.

      The melodious character of the earth!

       The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go!

       The justified mother of men!