1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is bornconceald or unconceald, the seed is waiting.
2
Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the Soulabove all science;
For it, has History gatherd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it, the Real to the Ideal tends.
For it, the mystic evolution;
Not the right only justifiedwhat we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge, festering trunkfrom craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge, and joyjoy universal.
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majoritythe varied, countless frauds of men and States,
Electric, antiseptic yetcleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.
3
Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfections murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of Heavens glory.
To fashions, customs discord,
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard,
From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
4
O the blest eyes! the happy hearts!
That seethat know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth!
5
And thou, America!
For the Schemes culminationits Thought, and its Reality,
For these, (not for thyself,) Thou hast arrived.
Thou too surroundest all;
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, Thou too, by pathways broad and new,
To the Ideal tendest.
The measurd faiths of other landsthe grandeurs of the past,
Are not for Theebut grandeurs of Thine own;
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.
All, all for Immortality!
Love, like the light, silently wrapping all!
Natures amelioration blessing all!
The blossoms, fruits of agesorchards divine and certain;
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual Images ripening.
6
Give me, O God, to sing that thought!
Give megive him or her I love, this quenchless faith
In Thy ensemble. Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space;
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream?
Nay, but the lack of it the dream,
And, failing it, lifes lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.
Song of the Universal.
written byWalt Whitman
© Walt Whitman