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,…
1 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, or any…
BE composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature; Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; Not till the waters refuse to…
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? Why I was…
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 and freedom of…
1 OF these years I sing, How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the…
1 OF ownership—As if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself. 2 Of waters, forests, hills; Of the…
OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the resume; Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding poems; As if those shreds,…
OF obedience, faith, adhesiveness; As I stand aloof and look, there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men, following the lead of those who do not…