Walt Whitman

"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 pione"

"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 ful"

"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"

"Ages and ages, returning at intervals, Undestroy'd, wandering immortal, Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, I, chanter"

"As consequent from store of summer rains, Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations, Or subterranean sea-ri"

"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"

"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,"

"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?"

"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 reste"

"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"

"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? No map, there,"

"These Carols, sung to cheer my passage through the world I see, For completion, I dedicate to the Invisible World."

"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 mysel"

"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"

"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 prost"

"Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road--lo! such faces! Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; The spiritual, p"

"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 analog"

"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"

"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 aut"

"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 s"

"Out of the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap'd-up skeletons of kings, Out of that old entire European debris the shatter'd"

"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, w"

"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 ligh"

"A promise to California, Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon: Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to"

"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 r"

"Roots and leaves themselves alone are these; Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side, Breast-sorrel and pinks of"

"Thither, as I look, I see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close, always obligated; Thither hours, months, years thither trades, c"

"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 cautio"

"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"

"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,"

"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"

"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 soldier"

"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 m"

"We two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows"

"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-"

"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,"

"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, sailo"

"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 s"

"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"

"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 th"

"AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, The confession I made I resume--what I said to you in the open air I resume: I know I am restless, and"

"May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life, Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me, Or may-be"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face, We must separate awhile, Here! take from my lips this kiss. Whoever you are, I give it especially to you"

"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. L"

"Hark! some wild trumpeter some strange musician, Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. I hear thee, trumpeter listening, aler"

"I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother; The sleeping mother and babe-hush'd, I study them long and long."

"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,"

"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"

"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 sa"

"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 a"

"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"

"Slient 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"

"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"

"To conclude I announce what comes after me; I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart. I remember I said, bef"

"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, o"

"As they draw to a close, Of what underlies the precedent songs of my aims in them; Of the seed I have sought to plant in them; Of joy, sweet joy, t"

"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 wome"