LEAVES OF GRASS
Excerpts from “Faces” By Walt Whitman
Sauntering the pavement , or riding the country by-roads
--lo! Such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
The spiritual, prescient face—always welcome,
common, benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music- the grand faces of natural
lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top;
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the
shaved blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face;
The 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The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;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
This face is a life-boat;
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds
for the rest;
This face is flavor’d fruit, ready for the eating;
This face of a healthy and 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 spoke, I except not one –red,
white, black , are all 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.
