States!

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1. Over the Carnage 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 of All! you shall yet be victorious! You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the […]...
2. On Journeys Through The States 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 have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves, and passing on, We have said, Why should not a man or woman do as […]...
3. In The States With half a heart I wander here As from an age gone by A brother yet – though young in years, An elder brother, I. You speak another tongue than mine, Though both were English born. I towards the night of time decline, You mount into the morn....
4. To the United States Senate And must the Senator from Illinois Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes? This brazen gutter idol, reared to power Upon a leering pyramid of lies? And must the Senator from Illinois Be the world’s proverb of successful shame, Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, Who, when the sad State spares […]...
5. To The States 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 Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns! O north, your arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President? […]...
6. To a President 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 that only such as they are for These States, And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift […]...
7. Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy 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 promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at […]...
8. Long I Thought that Knowledge 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 would be their orator; Then I met the examples of old and new heroes-I heard of warriors, sailors, and all dauntless […]...
9. Prairie States, The 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, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations, To justify the past....
10. To the United States of America Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day When first they challenged freeman to the fray, And with the Briton dared the American. Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man: Labour and Justice now shall have their way, And in a League of Peace […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Or from that Sea of Time 1 OR, from that Sea of Time, Spray, blown by the wind-a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells; (O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless! Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held, Murmurs and echoes still bring up-Eternity’s music, faint and far, Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim-strains for the […]...
13. Chanting the Square Deific 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 JEHOVAH am I, Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; Not Time affects me-I am Time, old, modern as any; Unpersuadable, […]...
14. I, Too, Sing America I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am […]...
15. Scented Herbage of My Breast 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 you, delicate leaves, Every year shall you bloom again-out from where you retired, you shall emerge again; O I do not […]...
16. France, the 18th year of These States 1 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 the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling […]...
17. Not Heat Flames up and Consumes 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, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may; Not these-O none of these, more than the flames of me, consuming, burning for […]...
18. Let America Be America Again Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed Let it be that great strong land of love Where never […]...
19. Walt Whitman's Caution 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, ever afterward resumes its liberty....
20. Making The Lion For All It's Got A Ballad I came home and found a lion in my room… [First draft of “The Lion for Real” CP 174-175] A lion met America In the road They stared at each other Two figures on the crossroads in the desert. America screamed The lion roared They leaped at each other America desperate to win Fighting with […]...
21. So Long 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 voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations. When America does what was promis’d, When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland […]...
22. As Consequent, Etc 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 rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, With the old streams of death.) Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods, Some down […]...
23. On an Invitation to the United States I My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears Which peoples old in tragedy Have left upon the centuried years. II […]...
24. The Strangest Creature On Earth You’re like a scorpion, my brother, You live in cowardly darkness like a scorpion. You’re like a sparrow, my brother, Always in a sparrow’s flutter. You’re like a clam, my brother, Closed like a clam, content, And you’re frightening, my brother, like the mouth of an extinct volcano. Not one, not five Unfortunately, you number […]...
25. Kosmos 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 forth from the windows, the eyes, for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing; Who contains […]...
26. With Antecedents 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, Greece and Rome; With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon; With antique maritime ventures,-with laws, artizanship, wars and […]...
27. Says 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 hereby retract it. 3 I say man shall not hold property in man; I say the least developed person on earth […]...
28. Ashes of Soldiers ASHES of soldiers! As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought, Lo! the war resumes-again to my sense your shapes, And again the advance of armies. Noiseless as mists and vapors, From their graves in the trenches ascending, From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, From every point of the compass, out of […]...
29. They May Rail at this Life They may rail at this life from the hour I began it I found it a life full of kindness and bliss; And, until they can show me some happier planet, More social and bright, I’ll content me with this. As long as the world has such lips and such eyes As before me this […]...
30. The Vagabond Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with stars to see, Bread I dip in the river – There’s the life for a man like me, There’s the life for ever. Let the blow fall […]...
31. The Message DO you not feel the white glow in your breast, my bird? That is the flame of love I send to you from afar: Not a wafted kiss, hardly a whispered word, But love itself that flies as a white-winged star. Let it dwell there, let it rest there, at home in your heart: Wafted […]...
32. From The 'Antigone&#039 Overcome O bitter sweetness, Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl The rich man and his affairs, The fat flocks and the fields’ fatness, Mariners, rough harvesters; Overcome Gods upon Parnassus; Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the Same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family […]...
33. Behavior 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, faith-in it just as much as to manage an army or a city, or to write a book-perhaps more, The youth, […]...
34. No Labor-Saving Machine 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 literary success, nor intellect-nor book for the book-shelf; Only a few carols, vibrating through the air, I leave, For […]...
35. Sonnets 01: We Talk Of Taxes, And I Call You Friend We talk of taxes, and I call you friend; Well, such you are,-but well enough we know How thick about us root, how rankly grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters […]...
36. The Seer OH, if my spirit may foretell Or earlier impart, It is because I always dwell With morning in my heart. I feel the keen embrace of light Ere dawning on the view It sprays the chilly fold of night With iridescent dew. The robe of dust around it cast Hides not the earth below, Its […]...
37. The Four Winds The South wind said to the palms: My lovers sing me psalms; But are they as warm as those That Laylah’s lover knows? The North wind said to the firs: I have my worshippers; But are they as keen as hers? The East wind said to the cedars: My friends are no seceders; But is […]...
38. Antimatter On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, Where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the Earth and recede to the first slime of love. And in the evening the sun is just rising. Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon Childhood robs them of their […]...
39. Peace on Earth He took a frayed hat from his head, And “Peace on Earth” was what he said. “A morsel out of what you’re worth, And there we have it: Peace on Earth. Not much, although a little more Than what there was on earth before I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,- But never mind the ways […]...
40. A Soldier's Reprieve ‘Twas in the United States of America some years ago An aged father sat at his fireside with his heart full of woe, And talking to his neighbour, Mr Allan, about his boy Bennie That was to be shot because found asleep doing sentinel duty. “Inside of twenty-four hours, the telegram said, And, oh! Mr […]...