By placing his hand upon the reader metaphorically, Whitman symbolically transfers his love and reverence onto them, urging them to be the living expression of his poetry. In this act, Whitman not only cherishes the reader's individuality but also envisions them as the ultimate muse, inspiring his poetic creations. This gesture represents a unique and intimate bond between poet and reader, where the reader becomes the vessel for Whitman's deepest emotions and the living testament to his poetic love. And from there on, he leaves everything else and makes "hymns of you."

This reminds me of Guru Arjan's immortal words: Rasna Japti Tuhi Tuhi -  my tongue chants, "Only you!" "Only you!"

To You by Walt Whitman

To You

Walt Whitman

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,

I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands

Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,

Your true soul and body appear before me,

They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,

I whisper with my lips close to your ear,

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,

I should have made my way straight to you long ago, 

I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,

None has understood you, but I understand you, 

None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself

None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,

None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

   

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,

From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light,

But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color'd light,

From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

What you have done returns already in mockeries, 

Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you,

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,

I pursue you where none else has pursued you,

Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,

The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me,

The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,

There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,

No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,

No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! 

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, 

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they,

These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,

Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

Song of myself, 6

My favorite lines/phrases:

Reminded me of:

3. Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (31): "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars"

I am listening to Satnam meditation while reading this poem about Miracles by Walt Whitman and a similarly intoxicating poem, Vismaad by Guru Nanak today ...

Vismaad - By Guru Nanak

Vismaad naad vismaad ved. Vismaad je-a vismaad bhed.
Vismaad roop vismaad rang. Vismaad nagnae phireh jant.
Vismaad pa-un vismaad paanee. Vismaad agneekhaydeh vidaanee.
Vismaad dhartee vismaad khaanee. Vismaad saad lageh paraanee.
Vismaad sanjog vismaad vijog. Vismaad bhukh vismaad bhog.
Vismaad sifat vismaad saalaah. Vismaad ujharh vismaad raah.
Vismaad nayrhai vismaad door(h). Vismaad daykhai haajraa hajoor.
Vaiykh vidaan rahi-aa vismaad. Nanak bujhan pooraibhaag. ||1||”
(SGGS, Pg. No. 463)

Translation of Guru Nanak's Vismaad

-Shivpreet Singh

I am in awe as I watch the wind carve patterns into the hills of San Ramon and the rain slip through the cracks of parched California soil, reviving the roots of old oaks. The way fire has been leap and destroying houses and lives in Southern California is astonishing. And in that same week, I marvel at how life emerges—newborns wrapped in hospital blankets, tadpoles stirring in puddles in our backyard after a storm, spores drifting unseen through the air, waiting to root themselves in damp corners of forgotten places.

It stuns me how some fill their grocery carts to the brim, debating organic versus conventional, while others stand in food bank lines, stomachs already adjusting to emptiness. At bustling farmers’ markets, fruit is sampled and discarded with indifference, while in other places, a bruised apple is held like treasure. It is just as remarkable that some dedicate their lives to justice and kindness, while others, with equal conviction, hoard and deceive. It is no less astonishing to walk a well-lit road of principles than to wander aimlessly in the fog of uncertainty.

Some find meaning in distant stars and scientific equations, others in whispered mantras, and some in the silence between all things. Some are singing with me, some are singing by themselves; some don't know they are singing. There are those who feel the universe pressing close, its rhythm pulsing in their veins, while others drift through days untouched by wonder. I witness all of this and stand, wide-eyed, marveling at the strange, beautiful, inexplicable world we inhabit.

I am in awe of the seekers who pause to take it all in—who let themselves be shattered by its complexity and pieced back together by its beauty—are the ones who, perhaps, have understood something rare. I am especially in awe that in this lifetime I found such ancient bards in modern times. But most of all, I am awe that I get to steal your words, dear Guru Nanak, from page 463 of the Guru Granth Sahib, and call them my own. I love this Vismaad.

Another take on this:

First the poem, then my commentary as well as a couple of other analyses. 

O Me! O Life!

Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

- Walt Whitman

Reminds me of Guru Arjan's Saranjaam Laag:

 

Pavan, the Guru

I sit 

in the middle of the Golden Gate of all poetry 

squinting backwards into the past.

To me its somewhat unclear 

how I ever got here.

Then I stare into an obscure future 

through the smoky 

California 

sky

into two hills 

on the horizon looking 

directly into the subdued sun

appearing relatively victorious today.

A few days ago here

the he forgot

to rise.

Where were you?

Look ...

You ...

singer of all

modern connections, Walt!

Have you heard of the survival rule of 3's 

which says that one can live without 

food  for 3 weeks, without water 

for 3 days, but sans air 

just 3 minutes.

I heard some have returned

to mother earth

waiting for 

a gasp.

And you have not yet clarified

which is more victorious:

death or dismay?

O tranquil song 

of the air,

where?

Pavan

O Wind!

Carrier of all

working night and day

Where are you to eclaricise,

O Guru of all gurus, to clear the way?

Questions. 

EM Foresters book by the same name may have been based on this poem. It came a few decades after Whitman’s poem. It was confirmed in a YouTube video that it was. Hmm. Will be interesting to hear the story. It brought a lot of acclaim to the writer. 

 

1
Singing my days,  
Singing the great achievements of the present,  
Singing the strong light works of engineers,  
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)  
In the Old World the east the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann’d,  
The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;  
Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,   
The Past! the Past! the Past!  
  
The Past— the dark unfathom’d retrospect!
The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows!  
The past—the infinite greatness of the past!  
For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?  
(As a projectile, form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on,   
So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)
 
2
Passage O soul to India!  
Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.  
  
Not you alone proud truths of the world!  
Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,  
But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,
The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams!  
The deep diving bibles and legends,  
The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;  
O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun!  
O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven!
You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold!   
Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams!  
You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!  
You too with joy I sing.  
Passage to India!
Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?  
The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,    
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,  
The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, 
The lands to be welded together.  
  
A worship new I sing, 
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,  
You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,   
You, not for trade or transportation only, 
But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.  

3
Passage to India!  
Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,  
I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open’d,  
I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van,  
I mark, from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance,   
I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d,  
The gigantic dredging machines.  
  
In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)  
I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, surmounting every barrier,
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte, carrying freight and passengers,    
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,   
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,  
I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes,   
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts,
I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains,   
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,  
I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,    
I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,  
I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,
Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,    
Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,  
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,  
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,  
The road between Europe and Asia.
  
(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!  
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,  
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)  

4
Passage to India!  
Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,
Over my mood stealing and spreading they come,  
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.  
  
Along all history, down the slopes,  
As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising,  
A ceaseless thought, a varied train—lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise,
The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions;  
Again Vasco de Gama sails forth,  
Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass,  
Lands found and nations born, thou born America,  
For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d,
Thou, rondure of the world at last accomplish’d.  

5
O vast Rondure, swimming in space,   
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty,  
Alternate light and day, and the teeming spiritual darkness,  
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,  
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,  
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.  
  
Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,  
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,  
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,   
With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?  
  
Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?  
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?  
Who bind it to us? What is this separate Nature, so unnatural?  
What is this earth, to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours,    
Cold earth, the place of graves.)  
  
Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.  
  
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)  
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,  
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,  
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true Son of God shall come singing his songs.  
  
Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified,   
All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d,  
All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,   
All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, 
The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,   
Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet,  
(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,  
He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)  
Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.  
  
6
Year at whose wide-flung door I sing!  
Year of the purpose accomplish’d!  
Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!  
(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,)
I see, O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all,  
Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World,   
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,  
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.  
  
Passage to India!
Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,  
The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.  
  
Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward,   
The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth’s lands,  
The streams of the Indus and the Ganges, and their many affluents,
(I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,)   
The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches suddenly dying,  
On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia,  
To the south the great seas and the Bay of Bengal,  
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes,
Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha,  
Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors,  
The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe,  
The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese,   
The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor,
Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d,  
The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest,  
Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.  
The medieval navigators rise before me,  
The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise,
Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring,  
The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.  
  
And who art thou, sad shade?  
Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,  
With majestic limbs, and pious beaming eyes,
Spreading around, with every look of thine, a golden world,  
Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.  
  
As the chief histrion,  
Down to the footlights walks in some great scena,  
Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself,
(History’s type of courage, action, faith,)  
Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet,  
His voyage behold, his return, his great fame,  
His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain’d,   
Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
  
(Curious in time, I stand, noting the efforts of heroes,   
Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death?  
Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? lo, to God’s due occasion,   
Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,  
And fills the earth with use and beauty.) 
  
7
Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,  
Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,  
The young maturity of brood and bloom,   
To realms of budding bibles.  
  
O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,
Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,   
Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return,  
To reason’s early paradise,  
Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions,  
Again with fair creation. 
  
8
O we can wait no longer,   
We too take ship O soul,  
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,  
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,  
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,  
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.  
  
With laugh, and many a kiss,  
(Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,)   
O soul, thou pleasest me, I thee.
  
Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,  
But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.  
  
O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,   
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,  
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,  
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,   
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,  
I and my soul to range in range of thee.  
  
O Thou transcendant,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,   
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,   
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,   
Thou moral, spiritual fountain— affection’s source— thou reservoir,   
(O pensive soul of me— O thirst unsatisfied— waitest not there?
Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)  
Thou pulse— thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,  
That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,  
Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,  
How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself,
I could not launch, to those, superior universes?  
  
Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,  
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,  
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,  
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,  
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.  
  
Greater than stars or suns,  
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;  
What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?
What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul?  
What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?   
What cheerful willingness for others’ sake, to give up all?  
For others’ sake to suffer all?  
  
Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,  
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,  
As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,   
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.  
  
9
Passage to more than India!
Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?  
O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like these?  
Disportest thou on waters such as those?  
Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?  
Then have thy bent unleash’d.
  
Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!  
Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!  
You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.  
Passage to more than India!  
O secret of the earth and sky!
Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!  
Of you O woods and fields! Of you strong mountains of my land!   
Of you O prairies! of you, gray rocks!  
O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!  
O day and night, passage to you!
  
O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!  
Passage to you!  
  
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!  
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!  
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?  
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?   
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?   
  
Sail forth— steer for the deep waters only,   
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,  
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.  
  
O my brave soul!  
O farther farther sail!  
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

It reminds me of Kabir's Gao Gao Ri Dulhani:

To the Garden, the World

- Walt Whitman

To the garden, the world, anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,
Amorous, mature—all beautiful to me—all wondrous;
My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous;
Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present—content with the past,
By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.