Come, said my Soul, Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,) That should I after death invisibly return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chants ...

One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say...

One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say...

As I ponder’d in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands,...

In cabin’d ships at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves, Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine, Where joyous ...

I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted....

You who celebrate bygones, Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself, Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and pri...

To thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, (I think all wa...

I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidólons. Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments,...

For him I sing, I raise the present on the past, (As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,) With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws, To make himself by the...

When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught o...

Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed...

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,) How dear and dreadful they are to the earth, How they inure to themselves as much as to any⁠—what a paradox appears their age, How p...

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, eve...

On journeys through the States we start, (Ay through the world, urged by these songs, Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,) We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all. W...

Here, take this gift, I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general, One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race, Some brave confronter of des...

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, povert...

Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close, always obligated, Thither hours, months, years⁠—thither trades, compacts, establishments, even the most minute, Thith...

Lo, the unbounded sea, On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails, The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately⁠—below emulous waves press forwa...

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason sing...

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal, And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, And artillery-men, the d...

Still though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality, I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)...

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book n...

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for yo...

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?...

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I, Therefore for thee the following chants....

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother, After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern ...

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother, After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern ...

Victory, union, faith, identity, time, The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports. This then is life, Here is what has come to the surface after s...

Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian! Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses! For you a programme of chants. Chants of the prairies, Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to th...

Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North, Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring, Surround them East and West, for they would surround you, And you preced...

Dead poets, philosophs, priests, Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, Language-shapers on other shores, Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, I dare not proceed t...

The soul, Forever and forever⁠—longer than soil is brown and solid⁠—longer than water ebbs and flows. I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems, And I wil...

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races, I advance from the people in their own spirit, Here is what sings unrestricted faith. Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may, I make the poem o...

What are you doing young man? Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours? These ostensible realities, politics, points? Your ambition or business whatever it may be? It is wel...

What do you seek so pensive and silent? What do you need camerado? Dear son do you think it is love? Listen dear son⁠—listen America, daughter or son, It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to e...

Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion, The following chants each for its kind I sing. My comrade! For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclu...

As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in the briers hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also, I have paus’d to hear him n...

Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing. Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us, For those who belong here and those to come, I exultant to be ready f...

Was somebody asking to see the soul? See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands. All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen...

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements! Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet? Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand? Toward the male of the States, and towar...

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on. For your life adhere to me, (I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you, but what of that? Must not Nature be p...

On my way a moment I pause, Here for you! and here for America! Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I harbinge glad and sublime, And for the past I pronounce what the air h...

Expanding and swift, henceforth, Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious, A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race dominating previous ones and g...

See, steamers steaming through my poems, See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing, See, in arrière, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim,...

O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only. O a word to clear one’s path ahead endlessly! O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild! O now I triumph⁠—and you shall also; O han...

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spea...

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spea...

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it....

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more you...

Trippers and askers surround me, People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and...

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhy...

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopefu...

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d ...

The little one sleeps in its cradle, I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, I peeringly v...

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready, The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon, The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged, The armfuls are p...

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d ...

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, She hide...

The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market, I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down. Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests ...

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain, The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois’d on one l...

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close, Find its purpose and p...

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksg...

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse...

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle an...

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I...

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all, I will not have a single person slighted or left away...

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your ow...

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into ...

You sea! I resign myself to you also⁠—I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together,...

Endless unfolding of words of ages! And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse. A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It ...

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immod...

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, We found our own O my soul in th...

Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking...

To be in any form, what is that? (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough. Mine is no callous shell, I...

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, My flesh and blood playing out lightning to...

Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me? Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, Rich showering rain, and recom...

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or m...

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the ...

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in t...

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at, What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass, What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed, And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars o...

Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth, (I tell not the fall of Alamo, Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,) ’Tis the tale of the murder i...

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me. Our foe was no skulk in his ...

Stretch’d and still lies the midnight, Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer’d, The captain o...

You laggards there on guard! look to your arms! In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d! Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel...

Enough! enough! enough! Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back! Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping, I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. That I could ...

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian? Is he from the Mississippi country?...

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask⁠—lie over! You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also. Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands, Say, old top-knot, what do you want...

I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs, And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help. I heard what was said of the universe, Heard it and heard it of several thousan...

A call in the midst of the crowd, My own voice, orotund sweeping and final. Come my children, Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pa...

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, Believing I...

It is time to explain myself⁠—let us stand up. What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. The clock indicates the moment⁠—but what does eternity indicate?...

O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity! O manhood, balanced, florid and full. My lovers suffocate me, Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls, co...

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured. I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut...

I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The boy I love, the same ...

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong wi...

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting, I recline b...

There is that in me⁠—I do not know what it is⁠—but I know it is in me. Wrench’d and sweaty⁠—calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep⁠—I sleep long. I do not know it⁠—it is without name⁠—it is a wor...

The past and present wilt⁠—I have fill’d them, emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle ...

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last sc...

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 revolvin...

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 revolvin...

From pent-up aching rivers, From that of myself without which I were nothing, From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men, From my own voice resonant, singing the pha...

I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the ch...

I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the ch...

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. The expression of the face balks account, But the exp...

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons, And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons. This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person, The shape of his ...

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass amo...

This is the female form, A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot, It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction, I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all fall...

The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place, He too is all qualities, he is action and power, The flush of the known universe is in him, Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and def...

A man’s body at auction, (For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,) I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business. Gentlemen look on this wonder, Whateve...

A woman’s body at auction, She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers, She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers. Have you ever loved the body of a w...

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are ...

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking. Sex contains all, bodies, souls, Meanings, proof...

Spontaneous me, Nature, The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, The s...

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not! (What is this that frees me so in storms? What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?) O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than ...

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, Whispering I love you, before long I die, I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once lo...

Ages and ages returning at intervals, Undestroy’d, wandering immortal, Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, I, chanter of Adamic songs, Through the new garden the West, the...

We two, how long we were fool’d, Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes, We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return, We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark, We are...

O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus? O why sting me for a swift moment only? Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease? Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you w...

I am he that aches with amorous love; Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? So the body of me to all I meet or know....

Native moments⁠—when you come upon me⁠—ah you are here now, Give me now libidinous joys only, Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank, To-day I go consort with Nature’s darling...

Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there who de...

I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I pass’d the church, Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch’d sighs up above so mournful, I heard the ...

Facing west from California’s shores, Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar, Look off th...

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afr...

In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures, profits, conformities, Which too...

In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures, profits, conformities, Which too...

Scented herbage of my breast, Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards, Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death, Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shal...

Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different. Who is he that woul...

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comra...

These I singing in spring collect for lovers, (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy? And who but I should be the poet of comrades?) Collecting I traverse the garden the ...

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only, Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself, Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs, Not in many an oath and promise broken, Not in my wilful an...

Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded, That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That may-be identity beyond the grave is a bea...

And now gentlemen, A word I give to remain in your memories and minds, As base and finalè too for all metaphysics. (So to the students the old professor, At the close of his crowded course.) Having st...

Recorders ages hence, Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me, Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The frien...

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d, And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were ac...

Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it is so easy to have m...

Roots and leaves themselves alone are these, Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter than vines, Gushes fro...

Not heat flames up and consumes, Not sea-waves hurry in and out, Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightly along white down-balls of myriads of seeds, Wafted, sailing gracef...

Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving! O drops of me! trickle, slow drops, Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops, From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d, From my face, from my for...

City of orgies, walks and joys, City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious, Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spectacles, repay me, No...

Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes, This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck, My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm; Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting k...

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbend...

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with yo...

This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful, It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy, France, ...

I hear it was charged against me that I sought 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 t...

The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing, I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, be...

When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house, But when I hear of th...

We two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm’d and fearless, ea...

A promise to California, Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon; Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust American love, F...

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems....

No labor-saving machine, Nor discovery have I made, Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library, Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America, Nor l...

A glimpse through an interstice caught, Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner, Of a youth who loves me and whom I...

A leaf for hand in hand; You natural persons old and young! You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi! You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! You twain! and...

Earth, my likeness, Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth, For an athlete is enam...

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dream’d that was the new city of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love...

What think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the nig...

To the East and to the West, To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania, To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love, These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs ar...

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love, But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person arden...

Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine; Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins, If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers, Of what us...

Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love! O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied or another born, Ethereal, the last athletic reality, ...

Among the men and women the multitude, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs, Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am, Some are baff...

O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you, As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for yo...

That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood, chattering, chaffering, How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits, How often I question and doubt whether tha...

Full of life now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States, To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence, To you yet unborn these, seeking you. When you read...

O take my hand Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next, Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all. What widens within y...

O take my hand Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next, Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all. What widens within y...

Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens, Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east⁠—America is provided for in the west, Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and so...

What do you hear Walt Whitman? I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing, I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early in the day, I hear emulous shouts of Austral...

What do you see Walt Whitman? Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you? I see a great round wonder rolling through space, I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails,...

I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth, I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe, I see them in Asia and in Africa. I see the electric telegraphs of the earth, I see the filaments of ...

I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India, I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara. I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by...

I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and blossoms and corn, I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions. I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown e...

I see the regions of snow and ice, I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn, I see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance, I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs, I see t...

I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them, I am a real Parisian, I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople, I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne, I a...

I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries, I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison’d splint, the fetish, and the obi. I see African and Asiatic towns, I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne...

You whoever you are! You daughter or son of England! You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia! You dim-descended, black, divine-soul’d African, large, fine-headed, nobly-form’d,...

You Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair’d hordes! You own’d persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes! You poo...

My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth, I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me ...

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortun...

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortun...

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here. Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial, The black with...

You air that serves me with breath to speak! You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape! You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! You paths worn in...

The earth expanding right hand and left hand, The picture alive, every part in its best light, The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, The cheerful voice of the p...

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, rece...

Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me, Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me. Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons...

Here is the efflux of the soul, The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions, These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they? W...

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness, I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times, Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged. Here rises the fluid and attaching charact...

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me! Traveling with me you find what never tires. The earth never tires, The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensib...

Allons! the inducements shall be greater, We will sail pathless and wild seas, We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail. Allons! with power, liberty, t...

Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes, These are the days that must happen to you: You shall not heap up what is call’d riches, You shall ...

Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them! They too are on the road⁠—they are the swift and majestic men⁠—they are the greatest women, Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, Sai...

Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless, To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights, To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to, Again to merg...

Allons! through struggles and wars! The goal that was named cannot be countermanded. Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? Now understand me well⁠—it is...

Allons! the road is before us! It is safe⁠—I have tried it⁠—my own feet have tried it well⁠—be not detain’d! Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! Let the too...

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west⁠—sun there half an hour high⁠—I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to...

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face! Clouds of the west⁠—sun there half an hour high⁠—I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to...

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day, The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme, The similitudes ...

It avails not, time nor place⁠—distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,...

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you, I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river, The men and women I saw were all near to me, Others the same⁠—others who l...

What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not⁠—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hi...

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also, The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious, My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not...

Closer yet I approach you, What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you⁠—I laid in my stores in advance, I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born. Who was to know what shou...

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan? River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide? The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the tw...

Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide! Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women gener...

Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer, To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me. A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,...

Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer, To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me. A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,...

The indications and tally of time, Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs, Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts, What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant ...

Always our old feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula⁠—always the priceless delta of Louisiana⁠—always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas, Always California’s golden hills and hollows, and th...

O to make the most jubilant song! Full of music⁠—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! Full of common employments⁠—full of grain and trees. O for the voices of animals⁠—O for the swiftness and balance ...

Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother’s bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, ...

Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother’s bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, ...

Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind, Welcome are lands of pine and oak, Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig, Welcome are lands of gold, Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome th...

The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it, The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for a garden, The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull’d...

Muscle and pluck forever! What invigorates life invigorates death, And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, For the roughness of the ea...

The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely, Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of th...

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man’s or woman’s look! All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears; A ...

A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for all the forbidding appearance, There is the mine, there are the miners, The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d, the h...

I see the European headsman, He stands mask’d, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms, And leans on a ponderous axe. (Whom have you slaughter’d lately European headsman? Whose is that bl...

(America! I do not vaunt my love for you, I have what I have.) The axe leaps! The solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough,...

The shapes arise! The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d, The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud, The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the ...

Her shape arises, She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever, The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d, She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concea...

The main shapes arise! Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries, Shapes ever projecting other shapes, Shapes of turbulent manly cities, Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth, ...

(Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God. The loving Laborer through space and time.) After all not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is a...

(Ah little recks the laborer, How near his work is holding him to God. The loving Laborer through space and time.) After all not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is a...

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia, Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Aeneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings, Placard “Removed” and “To Let” ...

Responsive to our summons, Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination, Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation, She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown, I scent the odor of her breath’s deli...

But hold⁠—don’t I forget my manners? To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant for?) to thee Columbia; In liberty’s name welcome immortal! clasp hands, And ever henceforth sister...

We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves from thee, (Would the son separate himself from the father?) Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through past ag...

(This, this and these, America, shall be your pyramids and obelisks, Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon, Your temple at Olympia.) The male and female many laboring not, Shall ever here confro...

Away with themes of war! away with war itself! Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of blacken’d, mutilated corpses! That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or...

And thou America, Thy offspring towering e’er so high, yet higher Thee above all towering, With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law; Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating al...

And thou, the Emblem waving over all! Delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,) Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably ensovereign’d, In other scenes than these ...

A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the ear...

A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the ear...

The flashing and golden pageant of California, The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands, The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south, Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer,...

But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore, (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,) I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years, till now deferr’d,...

A song for occupations! In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations practical and orna...

A song for occupations! In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations practical and orna...

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching, It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no, I own publicly who you ...

The sun and stars that float in the open air, The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is something grand, I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happi...

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are, The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him, The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not...

Will the whole come back then? Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more? Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul? Strange and ha...

Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last, In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best, In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest, Happines...

A song of the rolling earth, and of words according, Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words, the substantial words ar...

A song of the rolling earth, and of words according, Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words, the substantial words ar...

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or sh...

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken. I swear there is no greatness or p...

These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls, (If they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then? If they had not reference to you in especial what were they then?) I swear I ...

Youth, large, lusty, loving⁠—youth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination? Day full-blown and splendid⁠—day of the immense ...

Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart,...

Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart,...

Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart,...

Lo! keen-eyed towering science, As from tall peaks the modern overlooking, Successive absolute fiats issuing. Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science, For it has history gather’d like husks around ...

Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air. From imperfection’s murkiest cloud, Darts always forth one ray of perfect lig...

And thou America, For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality, For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. Thou too surroundest all, Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by path...

Come my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlin...

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, tr...

A great year and place, A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer than any yet. I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw...

Myself and mine gymnastic ever, To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children, To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among ...

Year of meteors! brooding year! I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad, I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hai...

With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With ...

With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With ...

O but it is not the years⁠—it is I, it is You, We touch all laws and tally all antecedents, We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily include them and more, We stand amid time b...

In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past, And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time. I know that the past was great and the future will be great, A...

Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, Ride to-day through Manhattan. Libertad! I ...

Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, Ride to-day through Manhattan. Libertad! I ...

Superb-faced Manhattan! Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes. To us, my city, Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite sides, to walk in the space between, To...

And you Libertad of the world! You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of years, As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you, As to-morrow from the other side the qu...

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his b...

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his b...

As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother end...

As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother end...

As I wend to the shores I know not, As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me clos...

You oceans both, I close with you, We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why, These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. You friable shore with trails of ...

Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet...

Tears! tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck’d in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, Moist tears from the eyes of a mu...

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Waking renew’d on thy prodigious pinions, (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended’st, And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) Now a blu...

Aboard at a ship’s helm, A young steersman steering with care. Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, An ocean-bell⁠—O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves. O you give good notice indeed, you be...

On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and...

The world below the brine, Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle, openings, and pink turf, Different colors,...

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vas...

To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships⁠—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dash...

To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships⁠—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dash...

Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, A ...

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their ...

After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds, After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes, Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks, Tending in ceaseless flow towar...

To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early, Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show. Clear the way there Jonathan! Way for the President’s marshal⁠—way for the go...

To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early, Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show. Clear the way there Jonathan! Way for the President’s marshal⁠—way for the go...

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings. O h...

Hold it up sternly⁠—see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave’s eye...

Lover divine and perfect Comrade, Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. Thou, thou, the Ideal Man, Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in body and dilate in spi...

Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries, t...

Of ownership⁠—as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself; Of vista⁠—suppose some sight in arrière through the formative chaos, presu...

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard th...

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls....

O me! O 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 wh...

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn’d of Nature⁠—of the politics of Nature you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not se...

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in ...

What you give me I cheerfully accept, A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendezvous with my poems, A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as I journey through the States,⁠—why sho...

Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking...

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dea...

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding, And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away....

Silent and amazed even when a little boy, I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements, As contending against some being or influence....

On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner, He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs, He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs, With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d....

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful⁠—but the old are more beautiful than the young....

I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, The sleeping mother and babe⁠—hush’d, I study them long and long....

Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness; As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men....

A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself, Concealing her face, concealing her form, Changes and transformations every hour, every moment, Falling upon her even when she sleeps....

Of justice⁠—as if Justice could be anything but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors, As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions....

Gliding o’er all, through all, Through Nature, Time, and Space, As a ship on the waters advancing, The voyage of the soul⁠—not life alone, Death, many deaths I’ll sing....

Hast never come to thee an hour, A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? These eager business aims⁠—books, politics, art, amours, To utter nothingness?...

Of Equality⁠—as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself⁠—as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same....

I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea....

Locations and times⁠—what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home? Forms, colors, densities, odors⁠—what is it in me that corresponds with them?...

A thousand perfect men and women appear, Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings....

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight⁠—scum floating atop of the waters, Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? What a filthy President...

First O songs for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she ...

First O songs for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she ...

Arm’d year⁠—year of the struggle, No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year, Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano, But as a strong man erect, c...

Beat! beat! drums!⁠—blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows⁠—through doors⁠—burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is stud...

From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird, Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all, To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs, To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michi...

O a new song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind’s voice and that of the drum, By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and f...

Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me, Long I roam’d the woods of the north, long I watch’d Ni...

Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep, Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me, Long I roam’d the woods of the north, long I watch’d Ni...

’Twas well, O soul⁠—’twas a good preparation you gave me, Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill, Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us, Not through the migh...

Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities! Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good, My soul prepared in th...

The noble sire fallen on evil days, I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing, (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,) The insane knife toward the Mother of All. The noble son...

City of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here, All the lands of the earth make contribution...

Give me your hand old Revolutionary, The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,) Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years, You can walk old man, t...

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun⁠—hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses ...

I see before me now a traveling army halting, Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer, Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high, Broken, wit...

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance, With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley, The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on, Glitte...

By the bivouac’s fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow⁠—but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline, The darkness lit by spot...

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son. Lo, ’tis autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and re...

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of ...

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness, Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating, Till after ...

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent, Three forms I see on stretchers lyin...

As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods, To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,) I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; Mortally wounded he and buried on...

Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled; Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long, By deserts parch’d, snows chill’d, river...

Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me! Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me, Must I change my triumphant songs?...

An old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to b...

An old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to b...

O maidens and young men I love and that love me, What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust, In ...

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examin...

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are...

Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and rec...

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me t...

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me t...

Keep your splendid silent sun, Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods, Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, Keep the blossoming buckwheat fie...

The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath, On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, Down a new-made double grave. Lo, the moon ascending, Up from the east the silvery round...

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice, Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet, Those who love each other shall become invincible, They shall yet make Columbia victori...

I saw old General at bay, (Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,) His small force was now completely hemm’d in, in his works, He call’d for volunteers to run the enemy’s lin...

While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes, And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just...

Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human, With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet? Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? (’Tis while our army lines Car...

Not youth pertains to me, Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk, Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant, In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning ...

Race of veterans⁠—race of victors! Race of the soil, ready for conflict⁠—race of the conquering march! (No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,) Race henceforth owning no law but the law of i...

World take good notice, silver stars fading, Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching, Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning, Scarlet, significant, hands off warning, Now and henceforth flaunt from t...

O tan-faced prairie-boy, Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give⁠—we ...

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus sa...

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever...

How solemn as one by one, As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where I stand, As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the masks, (As I glance upward out ...

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 d...

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life! Covering all my lands⁠—all my seashores lining! Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth d...

Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me? Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes? Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow? Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, t...

Lo, Victress on the peaks, Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world, (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,) Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them al...

Spirit whose work is done⁠—spirit of dreadful hours! Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing,) Spirit of m...

Adieu O soldier, You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) The rapid march, the life of the camp, The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre, Red battles with their slaughter, the...

Turn O Libertad, for the war is over, From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world, Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past, From the singers...

To the leaven’d soil they trod calling I sing for the last, (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,) In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits a...

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity su...

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity su...

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity su...

O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night⁠—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d⁠—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless⁠—O helpless soul of me! ...

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with t...

In the swamp in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary the thrush, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleedi...

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the fields each sid...

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, With the show of the S...

(Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death. All over bouquets of roses, O deat...

O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to...

Sing on there in the swamp, O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me, ...

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? Sea-winds blo...

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love? Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, With the Fou...

Lo, body and soul⁠—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flas...

Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on dearest brother, warble your ...

Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with it...

To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swa...

Passing the visions, passing the night, Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death’s outlet song, y...

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the stead...

Hush’d be the camps to-day, And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons, And each with musing soul retire to celebrate, Our dear commander’s death. No more for him life’s stormy conflicts, Nor vict...

This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States....

By blue Ontario’s shore, As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, Chant me the poem, it said,...

By blue Ontario’s shore, As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, Chant me the poem, it said,...

A Nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms. A breed whose proof is in time and deeds, What w...

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? There can be any number of supremes⁠—one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails an...

Piety and conformity to them that like, Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like, I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives! I am...

Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, America brings builders, and brings its own styles. The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and pass’d to other s...

Land of lands and bards to corroborate! Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face, To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d both mother’s and father’s, His first parts s...

(Lo, high toward heaven, this day, Libertad, from the conqueress’ field return’d, I mark the new aureola around your head, No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce, With war’s flames and the la...

Others take finish, but the Republic is ever constructive and ever keeps vista, Others adorn the past, but you O days of the present, I adorn you, O days of the future I believe in you⁠—I isolate myse...

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, I heard the voice arising demanding bards, By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a Nation. To...

Of these States the poet is the equable man, Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, He ...

For the great Idea, That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets. Songs of stern defiance ever ready, Songs of the rapid arming and the march, The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag...

Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in the States? The place is august, the terms obdurate. Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind, He may wel...

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill’d from poems pass away, The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes, Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literatur...

Fall behind me States! A man before all⁠—myself, typical, before all. Give me the pay I have served for, Give to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest, I have loved the earth, sun, anima...

I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things, It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great, It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one, It is to walk rapidly t...

Underneath all, Nativity, I swear I will stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it; I swear I am charm’d with nothing except nativity, Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from na...

O I see flashing that this America is only you and me, Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me, Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me, Its Congress is you and me, the officers, ca...

I will confront these shows of the day and night, I will know if I am to be less than they, I will see if I am not as majestic as they, I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, I will see if...

Thus by blue Ontario’s shore, While the winds fann’d me and the waves came trooping toward me, I thrill’d with the power’s pulsations, and the charm of my theme was upon me, Till the tissues that held...

O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! Not for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch’d you forth, Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario’s shores, Have I sung so capricio...

Let that which stood in front go behind, Let that which was behind advance to the front, Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, Let the old propositions be postponed, Let a man se...

As consequent from store of summer rains, Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations, Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, Songs of continued years I si...

As consequent from store of summer rains, Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations, Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, Songs of continued years I si...

For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself, Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields, Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, Answering the pulses of thy sane and eq...

For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself, Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields, Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, Answering the pulses of thy sane and eq...

Ever upon this stage, Is acted God’s calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musi...

Fecund America⁠—to-day, Thou art all over set in births and joys! Thou groan’st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-garment, Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions, A myriad-...

When late I sang sad was my voice, Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war; In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood, Or pass’d with slow step through th...

But on these days of brightness, On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, Should the dead intrude? Ah the dead to me mar no...

I saw the day the return of the heroes, (Yet the heroes never surpass’d shall never return, Them that day I saw not.) I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies, I saw them approach...

Loud O my throat, and clear O soul! The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding, The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility. All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me, I see the ...

Toil on heroes! harvest the products! Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All, With dilated form and lambent eyes watch’d you. Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well! The Mothe...

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or st...

Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty, Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother, Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground, Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round he...

By the city dead-house by the gate, As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor, I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought, Her corpse they deposit unclaim’d, it ...

Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the s...

Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the s...

Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person⁠—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the...

Courage yet, my brother or my sister! Keep on⁠—Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs; That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any number of failures, Or by the indifference or ...

Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten thousand years before these States, Garner’d clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and travel’d their course and pass’d...

Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering, On Time, Space, Reality⁠—on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence. The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence, Little and large al...

O sight of pity, shame and dole! O fearful thought⁠—a convict soul. Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison, Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, Pouring in floods of melody in tones so p...

O sight of pity, shame and dole! O fearful thought⁠—a convict soul. Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison, Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, Pouring in floods of melody in tones so p...

The sun was low in the west one winter day, When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land, (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters, Gather’d to Sun...

The singer ceas’d, One glance swept from her clear calm eyes o’er all those upturn’d faces, Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal, seam’d and beauteous faces, Then rising, pas...

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,) Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature’s sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stri...

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionaire? The life thou lived’st we know not, But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of bro...

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionaire? The life thou lived’st we know not, But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of bro...

Silent, my soul, With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d, Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes. While through the interior vistas, Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of t...

O thou within this tomb, From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver, Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth, Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides. Nor by your streams ...

Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask, These lights and shades, this drama of the whole, This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sor...

Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask, These lights and shades, this drama of the whole, This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sor...

A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war, Of youth long sped and middle age declining, (As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second, Songs, ventures, speculation...

Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? Do you move in these...

Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? Do you move in these...

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere ar...

My spirit to yours dear brother, Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, I do not sound your name, but I understand you, I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, a...

You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and handcuff’d with iron, Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison? Me ruthless and devilish as any...

Laws for creations, For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and perfect literats for America, For noble savans and coming musicians. All must have reference to the ensemble of the...

Be composed⁠—be at ease with me⁠—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle ...

I was looking a long while for Intentions, For a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants⁠—and now I have found it, It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I ne...

Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls...

Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked fe...

Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day, Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them. By the curb toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works a...

Is reform needed? is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean...

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded, Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the superbest man of the earth, Unfolded out...

What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear⁠—it never tires me. To you your name also; Did you think there was nothing but...

Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also, Who has not look’d...

Others may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art or aught else, Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the western prairie-sc...

Who learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer, Editor, author, artist...

All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all ...

On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen’s group stands watching, Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon, The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across ...

O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, And ’mid its teeming ma...

In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds...

An old man’s thought of school, An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot. Now only do I know you, O fair auroral skies⁠—O morning dew upon the grass! And these I see,...

Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine! Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft an...

Through the soft evening air enwinding all, Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes, Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, (Yet...

With all thy gifts America, Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world, Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee⁠—with these and like of these vouchsafed to thee, What if one gift thou l...

In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house, It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memor...

A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed⁠—freedom’s ...

Proud music of the storm, Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, Strong hum of forest tree-tops⁠—wind of the mountains, Personified dim shapes⁠—you hidden orchestras, You serenades...

Proud music of the storm, Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, Strong hum of forest tree-tops⁠—wind of the mountains, Personified dim shapes⁠—you hidden orchestras, You serenades...

Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire, Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend, Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber, For thee they sing and dance O soul. A festival song,...

Ah from a little child, Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music, My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn, (The voice, O tender voices, memory’s loving voices, Last miracle of all, O dearest m...

I hear those odes, symphonies, operas, I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous’d and angry people, I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert, Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan. ...

Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me, To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of voices, Luther’s strong hymn Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, Rossini’s Stabat Mater do...

Then I woke softly, And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream, And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury, And all the songs of sopranos and tenors, And those rapt or...

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 Su...

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 Su...

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, Afr...

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 ...

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 s...

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 countles...

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 ...

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 tho...

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...

Passage to more than India! Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? Disportest thou on waters such as those? Soundest below the Sanskrit a...

A batter’d, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death, ...

I wander all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself,...

I wander all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself,...

I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid, Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake. It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman’s, I sit low in a straw-bottom c...

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea, His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs, I ...

I turn but do not extricate myself, Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet. The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound, The tempest lulls, the moon comes flounderi...