Page:Leaves of Grass (1855).djvu/96

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Leaves of Grass.

Dig out King George’s coffin .... unwrap him quick from the graveclothes .... box up his bones for a journey:
Find a swift Yankee clipper .... here is freight for you blackbellied clipper,
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! .... steer straight toward Boston bay.

Now call the President’s marshal again, and bring out the government cannon,
And fetch home the roarers from Congress, and make another procession and guard it with foot and dragoons.

Here is a centrepiece for them:
Look! all orderly citizens .... look from the windows women.

The committee open the box and set up the regal ribs and glue those that will not stay,
And clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

You have got your revenge old buster! .... The crown is come to its own and more than its own.

Stick your hands in your pockets Jonathan .... you are a made man from this day,
You are mighty cute .... and here is one of your bargains.



There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day .... or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird,
And the March-born lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf, and the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pondside .. and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there .. and the beautiful curious liquid .. and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads .. all became part of him.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him .... wintergrain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
And the appletrees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward .... and wood-berries .. and the commonest weeds by the road;