Walt Whitman

THE sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere, The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People, (Full well they know that message in the darkness, Full well return, respond within their breasts, their

1 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. 2 Lo, ’tis autumn; Lo, where the trees,

SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! Hour prophetic-hour resuming the past! Inflating my throat-you, divine average! You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. Open mouth of my Soul,

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,

1 MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering, On time, space, reality-on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence. 2 After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence; Little and large alike

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, leaves, foliage, roots, bark; We are

HOURS continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted, Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented spot, seating myself, leaning my face in my hands; Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when

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

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

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

1 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 of phantoms,

1 FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch 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

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,

1 ELEMENTAL drifts! How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me! As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I

1 OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask, (All straighter, liker Masks rejected-this preferr’d,) This common curtain of the face, contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (Tragedies,

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 tableaux, your spectacles, repay

TO the leaven’d soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last; (Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead, But forth from my tent emerging for good-loosing, untying the tent-ropes;) In

SO far, and so far, and on toward the end, Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me; But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity, Whether I

AS I watch’d the ploughman ploughing, Or the sower sowing in the fields-or the harvester harvesting, I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies: (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is

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 seen

1 IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life, But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death. And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death, To you,

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!)

1 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,

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?

BATHED in war’s perfume-delicate flag! (Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,) O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman! O to hear the tramp,

1 TO conclude-I announce what comes after me; I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart. I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, I would raise my

1 AT the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house, From the clasp of the knitted locks-from the keep of the well-closed doors, Let me be wafted. 2 Let me glide

YOU felons on trial in courts; You convicts in prison-cells-you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron; Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison? Me, ruthless and devilish

1 YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also; Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles! Earth to a chamber of mourning turns-I hear the o’erweening, mocking voice, Matter

O ME, man of slack faith so long! Standing aloof-denying portions so long; Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none,

THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

PENSIVE, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All, Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battle-fields gazing; (As the last gun ceased-but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d;)

A NOISELESS, patient spider, I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; Ever unreeling them-ever

1 TO think of time-of all that retrospection! To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? Have you fear’d the

1 AS a strong bird on pinions free, Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. The

1 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

1 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 bed,

O MATER! O fils! O brood continental! O flowers of the prairies! O space boundless! O hum of mighty products! O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud! O race of the future!

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 claws, a

AND now, gentlemen, A word I give to remain in your memories and minds, As base, and finale too, for all metaphysics. (So, to the students, the old professor, At the close of his

WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear; Labial gossip of night-sibilant chorals; Footsteps gently ascending-mystical breezes, wafted soft and low; Ripples of unseen rivers-tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing; (Or is it the

1 AFTER all, not to create only, or found only, But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded, To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free; To fill the gross, the

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

1 WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard 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. O ever-returning spring! trinity sure

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

THE business man, the acquirer vast, After assiduous years, surveying results, preparing for departure, Devises houses and lands to his children-bequeaths stocks, goods-funds for a school or hospital, Leaves money to certain companions to

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,

1 COME, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon; I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the

1 I SAY whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally right. 2 I say nourish a great intellect, a great brain; If I have said anything to the contrary, I

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 all; Dominant, with