From
Leaves of Grass, by
Walt Whitman:
I met a
seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the
world,
The fields of art and learning,
pleasure, sense,
To glean
eidólons.
Put in thy chants said he,
No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest as
light for all and entrance-song of all,
That of eidólons.
Ever the dim beginning,
Ever the growth, the rounding of the
circle,
Ever the
summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
Eidólons! eidólons!
Ever the mutable,
Ever materials, changing,
crumbling, re-cohering,
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing eidólons.
Lo, I or you,
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength,
beauty build,
But really build eidólons.
The ostent evanescent,
The substance of an
artist's mood or savant's studies long,
Or
warrior's,
martyr's, hero's toils,
To fashion his eidólon.
Of every human life,
(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought,
emotion, deed, left out,)
The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,
In its eidólon.
The old, old urge,
Based on
ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher
pinnacles,
From science and the modern still impell'd,
The old, old urge, eidólons.
The present now and here,
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
To-day's eidólons.
These with the past,
Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of
kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailor's voyages,
Joining eidólons.
Densities, growth, façades,
Strata of
mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
Eidólons
everlasting.
Exaltè, rapt, ecstatic,
The visible but their
womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
The mighty earth-eidólon.
All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling,
collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)
Fill'd with eidólons only.
The noiseless myriads,
The
infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
The separate countless
free identities, like eyesight,
The true realities, eidólons.
Not this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the
universes,
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
Eidólons, eidólons.
Beyond they lectures learn'd professor,
Beyond they
telescope or
spectroscope observer
keen, beyond all
mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's
surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his
chemistry,
The entities of entities, eidólons.
Unfixed yet fix'd,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidólons, eidólons, eidólons.
The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the
Modern, to
Democracy, interpret yet to them,
God and eidólons.
And thee my
soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
Thy mates, eidólons.
Thy body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy
body,
The only purpost of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidólon.
The very songs not in thy
songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and
floating,
A round full-orb'd eidólon.