Walt Whitman

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,

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

AS if a phantom caress’d me, I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore; But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore-the one I

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!

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

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

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 their arms toss’d wide, Pour down your unstinted

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

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

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

TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting-they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on

THOU orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand, The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam, And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue; O

NIGHT on the prairies; The supper is over-the fire on the ground burns low; The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets: I walk by myself-I stand and look at the stars, which I

1 O TO make the most jubilant poem! Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death. O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! Full of common employments!

THICK-SPRINKLED bunting! Flag of stars! Long yet your road, fateful flag!-long yet your road, and lined with bloody death! For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world! All its ships

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

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

I WAS asking for something specific and perfect for my city, Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name! Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient; I

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;

1 GREAT are the myths-I too delight in them; Great are Adam and Eve-I too look back and accept them; Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors,

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 the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I,

WHAT weeping face is that looking from the window? Why does it stream those sorrowful tears? Is it for some burial place, vast and dry? Is it to wet the soil of graves?

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

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

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

WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time, Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature’s sake, and sweet life’s sake-and death’s the same as life’s, Souvenirs of earliest summer-birds’ eggs, and the first berries;

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 that

RESPONDEZ! Respondez! (The war is completed-the price is paid-the title is settled beyond recall;) Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! Must we still go on with our

1 O sight of shame, and pain, 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

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,

1 DAREST thou now, O Soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow? 2 No map, there, nor guide, Nor voice

1 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;

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

1 COME closer to me; Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess; Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess. This is unfinish’d business with me-How is it

THIS day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror; Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay-But the cloud has pass’d, and the tarnish gone; … Behold, O Soul! it is

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

O BITTER sprig! Confession sprig! In the bouquet I give you place also-I bind you in, Proceeding no further till, humbled publicly, I give fair warning, once for all. I own that I have

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 and law’s and thrift’s society,

1 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,

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.

I NEED no assurances-I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul; I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are

1 CHANTING the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides; Out of the old and new-out of the square entirely divine, Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)… from this side

1 THOUGHT of the Infinite-the All! Be thou my God. 2 Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade! Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. 3 Thou-thou, the Ideal Man! Fair, able, beautiful,

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 baffled-But

WHO has gone farthest? For lo! have not I gone farther? And who has been just? For I would be the most just person of the earth; And who most cautious? For I would

1 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

O SUN of real peace! O hastening light! O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his height-and you too,

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.

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,

THE indications, and tally of time; Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs; Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts; What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of

NOT alone those camps of white, O soldiers, When, as order’d forward, after a long march, Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessen’d, we halted for the night; Some of us so fatigued,

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.

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

HE is wisest who has the most caution, He only wins who goes far enough. Any thing is as good as established, when that is established that will produce it and continue it.

FROM far Dakota’s cañons, Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence, Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes. The battle-bulletin, The Indian ambuscade, the craft,

WHAT ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning? Or, coming in, to avoid the bars, and follow the channel, a perfect pilot needs? Here, sailor! Here, ship! take aboard the most perfect

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,

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

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

1 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

1 EARTH, round, rolling, compact-suns, moons, animals-all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances-beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that

1 I CELEBRATE 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

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. 5

1 BY broad Potomac’s shore-again, old tongue! (Still uttering-still ejaculating-canst never cease this babble?) Again, old heart so gay-again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning; Again the freshness and the odors-again

NOW I make a leaf of Voices-for I have found nothing mightier than they are, And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place. O what is it in

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

1 HARK! some wild trumpeter-some strange musician, Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. I hear thee, trumpeter-listening, alert, I catch thy notes, Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, Now low,

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 forehead

WHAT best I see in thee, Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways, Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle, Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land

SCENTED herbage of my breast, Leaves from you I yield, I write, to be perused best afterwards, Tomb-leaves, body-leaves, growing up above me, above death, Perennial roots, tall leaves-O the winter shall not freeze

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 the shores

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

1 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

THAT which eludes this verse and any verse, Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind, Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart

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

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 world, and

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.

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

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 victorious. Sons of the Mother

1 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 savannas; Or a soldier

AMERICA always! Always our own 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 the silver mountains of New

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?

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 revolving cycles, in their

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; Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics,

PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love, O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born, The ethereal, the

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, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes,

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,

FROM Paumanock 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

1 WHERE the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long 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

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

THEY shall arise in the States, They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness; They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos; They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive; They shall be complete women and men-their

1 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! 2 For we cannot tarry here, We must

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 these shores. 5

DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life! Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining! Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! How I heard you flap and rustle,

1 AS the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud, A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. I shall go forth, I shall traverse The States awhile-but I cannot tell whither or

LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me-O if I could but obtain knowledge! Then my lands engrossed me-Lands of the prairies, Ohio’s land, the southern savannas, engrossed me-For them I would live-I

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 sing. Life’s ever-modern

1 A SONG of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms-a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay,

QUICKSAND years that whirl me I know not whither, Your schemes, politics, fail-lines give way-substances mock and elude me; Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d Soul, eludes not; One’s-self must never

AS at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,

1 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 earth and sky, Voice

PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition-I the spectre.) 5

TWO Rivulets side by side, Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. For the Eternal Ocean bound, These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life, Object and Subject hurrying,

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

WEAVE in! weave in, my hardy life! Weave yet a soldier strong and full, for great campaigns to come; Weave in red blood! weave sinews in, like ropes! the senses, sight weave in! Weave

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

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 hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,

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

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, and schoolboy-Draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson-it

1 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. 2 Lo! the moon ascending! Up from the east, the

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 great cities calling, Deliriate,

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. We

AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace, (For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal! Against vast odds, having gloriously won, Now thou stridest on-yet perhaps in time

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

I WILL take an egg out of the robin’s nest in the orchard, I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden, and go and preach to the world;

O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! O dear to me my birth-things-All moving things, and the

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

1 IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded-of that indescribable look; Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide, I dream,

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!

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

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, beings, Those of the

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

1 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

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

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

POET. 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

WANDERING at morn, Emerging from the night, from gloomy thoughts-thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee, harmonious Union! thee, Singing Bird divine! Thee, seated coil’d in evil times, my Country, with craft and black

JOY! shipmate-joy! (Pleas’d to my Soul at death I cry;) Our life is closed-our life begins; The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last-she leaps! She swiftly courses from the

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 priests; I,

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

ONE sweeps by, attended by an immense train, All emblematic of peace-not a soldier or menial among them. One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair, He has the simple magnificence

AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats! Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me! (For what is my life, or any man’s life, but a conflict with foes-the old, the incessant war?) You

SMALL is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest-namely, One’s-Self-that wondrous thing a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man’s physiology complete, from top to

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 war through time

THERE are who teach only the sweet lessons of peace and safety; But I teach lessons of war and death to those I love, That they readily meet invasions, when they come.

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

1 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;

, at a ship’s helm, A young steersman, steering with care. A bell 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

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.

IN the new garden, in all the parts, In cities now, modern, I wander, Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet, Days, places, indifferent-though various, the same, Time, Paradise, the

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 itself;

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.

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

THINK of the Soul; I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres; I do not know how, but I know it is so.

BEHAVIOR-fresh, native, copious, each one for himself or herself, Nature and the Soul expressed-America and freedom expressed-In it the finest art, In it pride, cleanliness, sympathy, to have their chance, In it physique, intellect,

1 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-In such, Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine,

YOU just maturing youth! You male or female! Remember the organic compact of These States, Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of man, Remember what was

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

1 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

AARM’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

I THOUGHT I was not alone, walking here by the shore, But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore, As I lean and look through the glimmering

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, eruditions, conformities, Which too long I was offering

1 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? 2 (‘Tis while