All Quotes

"She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm — always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and of the cling variety."

"If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York."

"History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women."

"You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a women's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town."

"I too announce solid things, Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing, Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring, triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight, They stand for realities — all is as it should be."

"Then my realities; What else is so real as mine? Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth, The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs, And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any."

"This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars."

"O soul, we have positively appear'd — that is enough."

"I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions, I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken, I see the landmarks of European kings removed, I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;) Never were such sharp questions ask'd as this day, Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God, Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest!"

"Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe? Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim, The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war, No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights; Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms, Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me, This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams O years! Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake;) The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperform'd, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me."

"Phantoms of countless lost, Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions, Follow me ever — desert me not while I live."

"Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over — and what love, O comrades!"

"Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love, Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers, Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride. Perfume all — make all wholesome, Make these ashes to nourish and blossom, O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry."

"How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity, How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results, (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.)"

"Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the unnamed lost ever present in my mind;"

"Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, Natural life of me faithfully praising things, Corroborating forever the triumph of things."

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

"Good in all, In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals, In the annual return of the seasons, In the hilarity of youth, In the strength and flush of manhood, In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, In the superb vistas of death."

"Wonderful to depart! Wonderful to be here! The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood! To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak — to walk — to seize something by the hand! To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh! To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large! To be this incredible God I am! To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love."

"Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around! How the clouds pass silently overhead! How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on! How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!) How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches and leaves! (Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)"

"O amazement of things — even the least particle! O spirituality of things!"

"I too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself."

"As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam'd, Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war, Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph."

"I say Nature continues, glory continues, I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe."

"O setting sun! though the time has come, I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration."

"To conclude, I announce what comes after me."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof."

"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!"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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.)"

"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?"

"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.)"

"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.)"