THE LOVE OF COMRADES

From “Calamus”

In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all standards hitherto published –from
the pleasures, profits, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed to my Soul;
Clear to me now, standards not yet published-
clear to me that my Soul,
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices
Only in comrades;
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abashed –for in this secluded spot I can
Respond as I would not dare elsewhere,
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself,
yet contains all the rest,
Resolved to sing no songs to-day but those of
manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth Month, in my forty-first year,
O proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.
…………………………………………………
I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all
the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes,
and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities,
with their arms about each other’s necks.

…………………………………………………

I hear it is charged against me that I seek to destroy institutions;
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,

(What indeed have I in common with them?-
Or what with the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Manhattan, and in every city of
These states, inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel
little or large, that dents the water,
Without edifices, or rules, or trustees, or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

Walt Whitman.