Poetry

"Produce great Persons, the rest follows. (3)"

"All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe."

"All is eligible to all, All is for individuals, all is for you, No condition is prohibited, not God's or any. (3)"

"Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? There can be any number of supremes — one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another. (3)"

"(O Mother — O Sisters dear! If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us, It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.) (2)"

"Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves, Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only. (2)"

"A breed whose proof is in time and deeds, What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections, We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves (2)"

"A Nation announcing itself, I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated, I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms. (2)"

"Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul."

"I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging…"

"Yet let me not be too hasty, Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one; Then if we die we die together, (yes, we'll remain one,) If we go anywhere we'll go together to meet what happens, May-be we'll be better off and blither, and learn something, May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?) May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning — so now finally, Good-bye — and hail! my Fancy."

"Good-bye my Fancy! Farewell dear mate, dear love! I'm going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Good-bye my Fancy."

"Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well, Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping; Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting, (On earth and in the sea — the universe — the stars there in the heavens,) Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless, And waiting ever more, forever more behind."

"Grand is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and stars, Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary; But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far — more lasting thou than they."

"After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, Vaunted Ionia's, India's — Homer, Shakspere — the long, long times' thick dotted roads, areas, The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars — Nature's pulses reap'd, All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration, All ages' plummets dropt to their utmost depths, All human lives, throats, wishes, brains — all experiences' utterance; After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print — something lacking, (Who knows? the best yet unexpress'd and lacking.)"

"I sing of life, yet mind me well of death..."

"Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,) But add, fuse, complete, extend — and celebrate the immortal and the good. Haughty this song, its words and scope, To span vast realms of space and time, Evolution — the cumulative — growths and generations. Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all — war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age."

"Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world? Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life; The something never still'd — never entirely gone? the invisible need of every seed? "It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."

"Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest, Allah is all, all,all — immanent in every life and object, May-be at many and many-a-more removes — yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there."

"For I too have forgotten, (Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture, wealth, inventions, civilization,) Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye mighty, elemental throes, In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy'd."

"Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air! Thou waters that encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm, Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy, How ill to e'er forget thee!"

"E'en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet."

"Although I come and unannounc'd, in horror and in pang, In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this voice so solemn, strange,) I too a minister of Deity."

"A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, With sudden, indescribable blow — towns drown'd — humanity by thousands slain, The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge, Dash'd pell-mell by the blow — yet usher'd life continuing on, (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris, A suffering woman saved — a baby safely born!)"

"When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay he is mine alone; — Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them."

"After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials, Accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought, Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers, Coating, compassing, covering — after ages' and ages' encrustations, Then only may these songs reach fruition."

"In every object, mountain, tree, and star — in every birth and life, As part of each — evolv'd from each — meaning, behind the ostent, A mystic cipher waits infolded."

"A vague mist hanging 'round half the pages: (Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul, That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities.)"

"Good-bye my fancy — (I had a word to say, But 'tis not quite the time — The best of any man's word or say, Is when its proper place arrives — and for its meaning, I keep mine till the last.)"

"Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn'd great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?"

"I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn; And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it; (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering, Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)"

"That coursing on, whate'er men's speculations, Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, Amid the bawling presentations new and old, The round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continue."

"Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest — namely, One's-Self — a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing."

"Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (Have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh armies — and fresh again;)"

"Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form — no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space — ample the fields of Nature."

"As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree, Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all! The brooding and blissful halcyon days!"

"Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight; But the bravest press'd to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown."

"To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead, To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent travelers — to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition — I'd rear laurel-cover'd monument, High, high above the rest — To all cut off before their time, Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, Quench'd by an early death."

"The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance, The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps — that inbound urge and urge of waves, Seeking the shores forever."

"My city's fit and noble name resumed, Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning, A rocky founded island — shores where ever gayly dash the coming, going, hurrying sea waves."

"I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile, I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me, An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, So long! Remember my words, I may again return, I love you, I depart from materials, I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead."

"My songs cease, I abandon them, From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you. Camerado, this is no book, Who touches this touches a man, (Is it night? are we here together alone?) It is I you hold and who holds you, I spring from the pages into your arms — decease calls me forth."

"Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving, To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set promulging, To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection me more clearly explaining, To young men my problems offering — no dallier I — I the muscle of their brains trying, So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary, Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making me really undying,) The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have been incessantly preparing."

"I foresee too much, it means more than I thought, It appears to me I am dying."

"I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd."

"I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble, I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant."

"I announce natural persons to arise, I announce justice triumphant, I announce uncompromising liberty and equality, I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride."

"I have offer'd my style to every one, I have journey'd with confident step; While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long! And take the young woman's hand and the young man's hand for the last time."

"I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and the songs of life and death, And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births."

"When America does what was promis'd, When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them, When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America, Then to me and mine our due fruition."