As I Lay With My Head In Your Lap, Camerado

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Title:     As I Lay With My Head In Your Lap, Camerado
Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman]

As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,

The confession I made I resume--what I said to you and the open air I resume.

I know I am restless, and make others so;

I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;

(Indeed I am myself the real soldier; It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)

For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;

I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me;

I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;

And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me;

And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me.

--Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,

Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated.

[The end]
Walt Whitman's poem: As I Lay With My Head In Your Lap, Camerado

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