The Path to the Woods

ITS friendship and its carelessness
Did lead me many a mile,
Through goat’s-rue, with its dim caress,
And pink and pearl-white smile;
Through crowfoot, with its golden lure,
And promise of far things,
And sorrel with its glance demure
And wide-eyed wonderings.

It led me with its innocence,
As childhood leads the wise,
With elbows here of tattered fence,
And blue of wildflower eyes;
With whispers low of leafy speech,
And brook-sweet utterance;
With bird-like words of oak and beech,
And whisperings clear as Pan’s.

It led me with its childlike charm,
As candor leads desire,
Now with a clasp of blossomy arm,
A butterfly kiss of fire;
Now with a toss of tousled gold,
A barefoot sound of green,
A breath of musk, of mossy mold,
With vague allurements keen.

It led me with remembered things
Into an old-time vale,
Peopled with faëry glimmerings,
And flower-like fancies pale;
Where fungous forms stood, gold and gray,
Each in its mushroom gown,
And, roofed with red, glimpsed far away,
A little toadstool town.

It led me with an idle ease,
A vagabond look and air,
A sense of ragged arms and knees
In weeds grown everywhere;
It led me, as a gypsy leads,
To dingles no one knows,
With beauty burred with thorny seeds,
And tangled wild with rose.

It led me as simplicity
Leads age and its demands,
With bee-beat of its ecstasy,
And berry-stained touch of hands;
With round revealments, puff-ball white,
Through rents of weedy brown,
And petaled movements of delight
In roseleaf limb and gown.

It led me on and on and on,
Beyond the Far Away,
Into a world long dead and gone,—
The world of Yesterday:
A faëry world of memory,
Old with its hills and streams,
Wherein the child I used to be
Still wanders with his dreams.

— Madison Cawein, from Rittenhouse, Jessie B., ed. The Little Book of Modern Verse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917; New York: Bartleby.com, 2002

To celebrate Walt Whitman’s 189th birthday, here is a selection from the Preface to the 1855 (first) edition of Leaves of Grass, as found in The Portable Walt Whitman, selected and with notes by Mark Van Doren (Viking, 1945):

The American poets are to enclose old and new, for America is the race of races. The expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach he stands, turning a concentrated light—he turns the pivot with his finger—he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul—it pervades the common people is preserves them—they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

I find this quiz result amusing in that I’ve long said mercy trumps justice. Justice has a tendency to get all mixed up with revenge.

But perhaps I don’t know myself after all. Surely an internet quiz can’t be wrong??

And I am a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Which, I should mention, has now established The Blog of Rights, where today the lead post is written by Nikki Anthony of Breckinridge County, Kentucky:

My name is Nikki Anthony and I just finished eighth grade at Breckinridge County Middle School in Kentucky. The ACLU is representing me, my younger sister, and five other students in a case against our school district and the U.S. Department of Education because our rights are being violated by my school segregating students by sex. I was raised in a house where rights are very important, and I was told, “if you don’t stand up for your rights then they will be taken away.” People in the United States don’t tolerate segregation by sex in everyday life, and yet they want us to tolerate it in our school system when we are supposed to be learning what being free really is.

Justice dictates that I tell you I found this quiz in the sidebar at Suburban Guerrilla. Susie is a Working Class Warrior.