All 27 Uses of
descend
in
Leaves of Grass
- …her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.
Chpt 3 *descended = hung down
- …of them, I am a real Parisian, I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople, I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne, I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick, I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence, I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw, or northward in Christiania or Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in some street in Iceland, I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
Chpt 6descend = arrive
- large and melodious thoughts descend upon me
Chpt 7 *descend = come
- That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
Chpt 23 *descended = passed (as though genetically or through time)
- I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I
descend into the arena,
(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the
winner's pealing shouts,
Who knows?†Chpt 2
- An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.†Chpt 3
- Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb'd
head, laughter, and naivete,
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of
the glance of his eyes.†Chpt 3
- I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down!†Chpt 3
- Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay
in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.†Chpt 3
- s bay or Baffin's bay,
Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the
firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land's End,
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter
and Cambodia,
Others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.†Chpt 6
- You dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd African, large, fine-headed,
nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms with me!†Chpt 6
- (you stock whence I
myself have descended;)
You sturdy Austrian!†Chpt 6
- tops,
Below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and
cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat,
Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites with
color'd flowers and berries enveloping huge trees,
The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,
noiselessly waved by the wind,
The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and
the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,
Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding
from troughs,
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees,
the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising;†Chpt 10
- Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest—we descend,
wild with excitement,
I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass,
lethargic, basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
vigorous arm;†Chpt 11
- What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?†
Chpt 11
- I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers, rejected kings,
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.†Chpt 12
- When the psalm sings instead of the singer,
When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved
the supporting desk,
When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they
touch my body back again,
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child
convince,
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter,
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly
companions,
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do
of men and women like you.†Chpt 15
- Has the night descended?†
Chpt 17
- When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love,
When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell I love
spit their salutes,
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and
heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,
When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the
wharves, thicken with colors,
When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,
When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and
foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
When the facades of the houses are al†Chpt 18
- gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the
wharves, thicken with colors,
When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,
When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and
foot-standers, when the mass is densest,
When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes
gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,
When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves
forward visible,
When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands
of years answers,
I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the
crowd, and gaze with them.†Chpt 18
- the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the
dwellers in Manhattan,
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies,
Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along
the Ohio river,
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing
weapons, robust year,
Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again,
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.†Chpt 21
- 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?†Chpt 26
- 2
I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake.†Chpt 28
- Transpositions
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever
bawling—let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands;
Let judges and criminals be transposed—let the prison-keepers be
put in prison—let those that were prisoners take the keys;
Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.†Chpt 28
- 3
Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,
A holy calm descends like dew upon me,
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,
I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;
Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,
Floating and basking upon heaven's lake.†Chpt 32
- said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and
yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)†Chpt 34
- After the Supper and Talk
After the supper and talk—after the day is done,
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,
(So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will they meet,
No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,
A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)
Shunning, postponing severance—seeking to ward off the last word
ever so little,
E'en at the exit-door turning—charges superfluous calling back— e'en as he descends the steps,
Something to eke out a minute additional—shadows of nightfall deepening,
Farewells, messages lessening—dimmer the forthgoer's visa†Chpt 34
Definitions:
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(1)
(descend as in: descend the mountain) move or slope downward
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(2)
(descend as in: in descending order) move down a scale -- as from larger numbers to smaller, or higher notes to lower
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(3)
(descend as in: descend from royalty) figuratively, to have come down a path from the past; i.e., to originate or come from -- such as in reference to ancestors or evolutionary origins
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(4)
(descend as in: descend into poverty) figuratively, to move downward to a worse or less prestigious situation
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(5)
(descend as in: descend into deeper thought) to move from a higher level of abstraction downward to a lower one (from more general to more specific); or to move from superficial to deeper thought
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(6)
(descend as in: thieves descended upon us) to come or arrive -- especially suddenly or from above or as an attack