Home ⇒ 📌Walt Whitman ⇒ Quicksand Years
Quicksand Years
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 give way-that is the final substance-that out of all
is
sure;
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life-what at last finally remains?
When shows break up, what but One’s-Self is sure?
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Turn, O Libertad 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 sing the trailing glories of the past; From the chants of the feudal world-the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste; Turn to […]...
- At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
- Years of the Modern YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d! Your horizon rises-I see it parting away for more august dramas; I see not America only-I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations preparing; I see tremendous entrances and exits-I see new combinations-I see the solidarity of races; I see that force advancing with irresistible power […]...
- The harm of Years is on him The harm of Years is on him The infamy of Time Depose him like a Fashion And give Dominion room. Forget his Morning Forces The Glory of Decay Is a minuter Pageant Than least Vitality....
- From My Last Years FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath, Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West, Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois-through Colorado, California air, For Time to germinate fully....
- Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States 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 throats of kings. O hope and faith! O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives! O many a sicken’d heart! Turn back […]...
- As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days 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 toward denser wars, Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers, Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all […]...
- Geniality How does the genius make itself known? In the way that in nature Shows the Creator himself, e’en in the infinite whole. Clear is the ether, and yet of depth that ne’er can be fathomed; Seen by the eye, it remains evermore closed to the sense....
- Since Years Ago For Evermore SINCE years ago for evermore My cedar ship I drew to shore; And to the road and riverbed And the green, nodding reeds, I said Mine ignorant and last farewell: Now with content at home I dwell, And now divide my sluggish life Betwixt my verses and my wife: In vain; for when the lamp […]...
- I Years had been from Home I Years had been from Home And now before the Door I dared not enter, lest a Face I never saw before Stare solid into mine And ask my Business there “My Business but a Life I left Was such remaining there?” I leaned upon the Awe I lingered with Before The Second like an […]...
- To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
- Now When The Number Of My Years NOW when the number of my years Is all fulfilled, and I From sedentary life Shall rouse me up to die, Bury me low and let me lie Under the wide and starry sky. Joying to live, I joyed to die, Bury me low and let me lie. Clear was my soul, my deeds were […]...
- Let Love Go, If Go She Will LET love go, if go she will. Seek not, O fool, her wanton flight to stay. Of all she gives and takes away The best remains behind her still. The best remains behind; in vain Joy she may give and take again, Joy she may take and leave us pain, If yet she leave behind […]...
- Letter to My Lover After Seven Years You gave me the child That seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poems, Five years of peace & two of pain. You gave me darkness, light, laughter & the certain knowledge That we someday die. You gave me seven years During which the cells of my […]...
- Barcelona The night before I left Milan A mob jammed the Cathedral Square, And high the tide of passion ran As politics befouled the air. A seething hell of human strife, I shrank back from its evil core, Seeing in this convulsive life The living seeds of war. To Barcelona then I came, And oh the […]...
- Their Height in Heaven comforts not Their Height in Heaven comforts not Their Glory nought to me ‘Twas best imperfect as it was I’m finite I can’t see The House of Supposition The Glimmering Frontier that Skirts the Acres of Perhaps To Me shows insecure The Wealth I had contented me If ’twas a meaner size Then I had counted it […]...
- On The Death Of A Young Lady Of Five Years Of Age FROM dark abodes to fair etherial light Th’ enraptur’d innocent has wing’d her flight; On the kind bosom of eternal love She finds unknown beatitude above. This known, ye parents, nor her loss deplore, She feels the iron hand of pain no more; The dispensations of unerring grace, Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise; […]...
- To a Historian 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, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own rights, Pressing the pulse of the […]...
- The Years To-night I close my eyes and see A strange procession passing me The years before I saw your face Go by me with a wistful grace; They pass, the sensitive, shy years, As one who strives to dance, half blind with tears. The years went by and never knew That each one brought me nearer […]...
- Two Years Later Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned? I could have warned you; but you are young, So we speak a different tongue. O you will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as […]...
- After Years Today, from a distance, I saw you Walking away, and without a sound The glittering face of a glacier Slid into the sea. An ancient oak Fell in the Cumberlands, holding only A handful of leaves, and an old woman Scattering corn to her chickens looked up For an instant. At the other side Of […]...
- 408. Commemoration of Rodney's Victory INSTEAD of a Song, boy’s, I’ll give you a Toast; Here’s to the memory of those on the twelfth that we lost!- That we lost, did I say?-nay, by Heav’n, that we found; For their fame it will last while the world goes round. The next in succession I’ll give you’s THE KING! Whoe’er would […]...
- Years Years, many parti-colour’d years, Some have crept on, and some have flown Since first before me fell those tears I never could see fall alone. Years, not so many, are to come, Years not so varied, when from you One more will fall: when, carried home, I see it not, nor hear Adieu....
- Twenty-Four Years Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes. (Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour.) In the groin of the natural doorway I crouched like a tailor Sewing a shroud for a journey By the light of the meat-eating sun. Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun, With my […]...
- Twenty Years Hence Twenty years hence my eyes may grow If not quite dim, yet rather so, Still yours from others they shall know Twenty years hence. Twenty years hence though it may hap That I be called to take a nap In a cool cell where thunderclap Was never heard, There breathe but o’er my arch of […]...
- The Sunset Years of Samuel Shy Master I may be, But not of my fate. Now come the kisses, too many too late. Tell me, O Parcae, For fain would I know, Where were these kisses three decades ago? Girls there were plenty, Mint julep girls, beer girls, Gay younger married and headstrong career girls, The girls of my friends And […]...
- Long Years apart can make no Long Years apart can make no Breach a second cannot fill The absence of the Witch does not Invalidate the spell The embers of a Thousand Years Uncovered by the Hand That fondled them when they were Fire Will stir and understand...
- To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age And I was once like this! that glowing cheek Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze Dies o’er the sleeping surface! twenty years Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends Who once so dearly prized this miniature, And loved it for its likeness, some are gone […]...
- The Pile of Years is not so high The Pile of Years is not so high As when you came before But it is rising every Day From recollection’s Floor And while by standing on my Heart I still can reach the top Efface the mountain with your face And catch me ere I drop...
- Twelve Years The line That remained, that Became true: . . . your House in Paris become The alterpiece of your hands. Breathed through thrice, Shone through thrice. ………………. It’s turning dumb, turning deaf Behind our eyes. I see the poison flower In all manner of words and shapes. Go. Come. Love blots out its name: to […]...
- I had been hungry, all the Years I had been hungry, all the Years My Noon had Come to dine I trembling drew the Table near And touched the Curious Wine ‘Twas this on Tables I had seen When turning, hungry, Home I looked in Windows, for the Wealth I could not hope for Mine I did not know the ample Bread […]...
- Ox Tamer, The IN a faraway 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, to break them; He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him; He will go, fearless, […]...
- I could not prove the Years had feet I could not prove the Years had feet Yet confident they run Am I, from symptoms that are past And Series that are done I find my feet have further Goals I smile upon the Aims That felt so ample Yesterday Today’s have vaster claims I do not doubt the self I was Was competent […]...
- There is a Zone whose even Years There is a Zone whose even Years No Solstice interrupt Whose Sun constructs perpetual Noon Whose perfect Seasons wait Whose Summer set in Summer, till The Centuries of June And Centuries of August cease And Consciousness is Noon....
- Two Hundred Years After Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night, (Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight) Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky He watched a nosing lorry grinding on, And straggling files of men; when these were gone, A double limber and six mules went by, Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud To […]...
- After a hundred years After a hundred years Nobody knows the Place Agony that enacted there Motionless as Peace Weeds triumphant ranged Strangers strolled and spelled At the lone Orthography Of the Elder Dead Winds of Summer Fields Recollect the way Instinct picking up the Key Dropped by memory...
- I love you in the morning I love you in the morning and at the setting of the sun And in the hours of darkness before the day’s begun And in my waking solitude to greet the break of dawn I grant you sleep that extra hour, although you sleep alone. I love you in the evening and into the night, […]...
- Men Improve With The Years I am worn out with dreams; A weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady’s beauty As though I had found in a book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; […]...
- Covering Two Years This nothingness that feeds upon itself: Pencils that turn to water in the hand, Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air, Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass, Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world Whitened the world that I was silenced by. There were two years of that. Slowly, Whatever splits, dissevers, […]...
- At Eighty Years As nothingness draws near How I can see Inexorably clear My vanity. My sum of worthiness Always so small, Dwindles from less to less To none at all. As grisly destiny Claims me at last, How grievous seem to me Sins of my past! How keen a conscience edge Can come to be! How pitiless […]...