Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | “Out from behind this mask” | | Walt Whitman (1819–1892) |
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OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut mask, | |
| These lights and shades, this drama of the whole, | |
| This common curtain of the face, contained in me for me, in you for you, in each for each. | |
| (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—O heaven! | |
| The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!) | 5 |
| This glaze of God’s serenest, purest sky, | |
| This film of Satan’s seething pit, | |
| This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; | |
| Out from the convolutions of this globe, | |
| This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, | 10 |
| This condensation of the universe (nay, here the only universe, | |
| Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt); | |
| These burned eyes, flashing to you, to pass to future time, | |
| To launch and spin through space, revolving, sideling, from these to emanate | |
| To you—whoe’er you are—a look. | 15 |
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| A traveller of thoughts and years, of peace and war, | |
| Of youth long sped and middling age declining | |
| (As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second, | |
| Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close), | |
| Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn, | 20 |
| As on the road, or at some crevice door by chance, or opened window, | |
| Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet, | |
| To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine, | |
| Then travel, travel on. | | | |
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