Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. Academy of American Poets. American Poets Magazine. Introduction to Leaves of Grass On July 4, , we will celebrate the th anniversary of what is possibly the greatest book of American poetry ever written. Read more about Walt Whitman.
Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem. Follow Us. Find Poets. Poetry Near You. Jobs for Poets. Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or. No more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race, Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself, Race of passion and the storm. I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face.
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant! Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night. Ah my silvery beauty—ah my woolly white and crimson! Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty! My sacred one, my mother. Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow? Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to. O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul.
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I. America, chant me the carol of victory, And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more.
Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in. If you would be freer than all that has been before, come. Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves. Northeast, Northwest, Southwest, Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern planta-. But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the. States be fused into the compact organism of a.
Equality, They live in the feelings of young men and the best. O the hard-contested fight! The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles—the hurtled. The place is august, the terms obdurate. Have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day.
Commissioners, ratified by the States, and read by. Washington at the head of the army? Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution? Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems. Are you faithful to things? Are you not of some coterie? Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and.
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to. Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some Is it not a mere tale? Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets,. Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is.
Does it answer universal needs? Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of. Can your performance face the open fields and the. Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear. Have real employments contributed to it? What does it mean to American persons, progresses,.
Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas? Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real. Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally. What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons, By the roadside others disdainfully toss'd. Have I not through life kept you and yours before me? These States, what are they except myself? I launch'd you forth, Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario's. Yet bards of latent armies, a million soldiers waiting. Ample Ohio's, Kanada's bards—bards of California! You by my charm I invoke. Ottawa, Some to Atlantica's bays, and so to the great salt brine.
Out of the depths the storm's abysmic waves, who knows Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and. Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty, Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns, Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest. West, Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles,.
Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that. Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are. That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings. Or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted,. Fair, fearful wreck—tenement of a soul—itself a soul, Unclaim'd, avoided house—take one breath from my. Is not every continent work'd over and over with. The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the.
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those. O if one could but fly like a bird! O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?
Come duly to the divine power to speak words! I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples. Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body. The towering feminine of thee? The mothers fit for thee? Yearning for thee harmonious Union! From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destin'd to fill the world. Orient, You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts, You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry, Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls, Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending.
Hearest those shouts of a conquering army? The lowing cattle, bleating. Arabs, Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern. Greeks dancing, [bodies, I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet. To you a new bard caroling in the West, Obeisant sends his love. Cathedral, Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the. Haydn, The Creation in billows of godhood laves me. Thee, Report myself once more to Thee.
Thee, Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my. Or with your mother and sisters? These also flow onward to others, you and I flow onward, But in due time you and I shall take less interest in. To think there will still be farms, profits, crops, yet for. The trees have, rooted in the ground! And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—.
And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me. I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the. Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for.
When shows break up what but One's-Self is sure? A huge sob—a few bubbles—the white foam squirting. Are souls drown'd and destroy'd so? Is only matter triumphant? By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought, Thought of man justified, blended with God, Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality! Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea! By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the. I define thee, How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?
I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, tran-. East, To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy every. Freedom, Set in the sky of Law. Spiritual World! The Present holds thee not— for such vast growth as. South, O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy. O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! O all dear to me! O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things and.
I coast up the Carolinas, I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the. O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old. City of hurried and sparkling waters! How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!
What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it! How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable. How all heroic martyrdoms to it! How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the.
How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every. O I think it is I—I think. I know what it is to receive the passionate love of. I do not believe any one possesses a more perfect or. Asia swarm'd upon, [promenade; Who walk'd with kings with even pace the round world's But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings, Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri,. Illinois, Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all.
O hasten flag of man—O with sure and steady step,. I see Freedom, completely arm'd and victorious and very. I see men marching and countermarching by swift. His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he.
Are all nations communing? Is humanity forming en-masse? This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever 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. My handsome tan-faced horsemen! Western States, or see freedom or spirituality, or. Aliaska, Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for—. 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. How the water sports and sings! Surely there is something more in each of the trees,.
I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheer-. And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love, I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs. O air and soil! O my dead, an. I sung, and the songs of life and death, And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many. I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste,. Is there a single final farewell? To Foreign Lands.
To Thee Old Cause. One's-self I Sing. In Paths Untrodden. As I Ponder'd in Silence. For You O Democracy. In Cabin'd Ships at Sea. These I Singing in Spring. To a Historian. Of the Terrible Doubt of. When I Read the Book. Beginning my Studies. The Base of all Meta-. Me Imperturbe. Recorders Ages Hence. The Ship Starting. When I heard at the close. I Hear America Singing.
What Place is Besieged? Are You the new Person. Still Though the One I. Roots and Leaves them-. Shut not Your Doors. Poets to Come. I Saw in Louisiana a live-.
To You. Thou Reader. To A Stranger. This moment yearning. Youth, Day, Old Age and. I hear it was charged. The Prairie-grass divid-. Song of the Universal. When I peruse the Con-. No Labour-saving Ma-. Myself and Mine. A Glimpse. With Antecedents. What think you I take. The reader is constantly being called to attention:. Rather than publish several collections containing new poems, he revised and expanded this single volume, so that the first edition of 12 poems eventually became a thick book of close to poems.
There are six editions of the book nine, if you count different type-settings. As soon as one was published Whitman would revise, regroup and add to the poems, treating the published book as a manuscript to be edited and republished.
People are equal, according to Whitman, because we are all mortal; moreover, we all have immortal souls. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. In this passage the grass signifies equality, by making no distinction where it grows.
The Sleepers , generally agreed to be among his finest, was worked on over the course of his career. It is one of his most ambitious poems, with a triumphant ending that seems genuinely earned. It poses questions about the limitations of a single human life. How can one life, or one death, or one gender, be enough for a man, a poet, consumed by curiosity? In the third section of the poem, he envisages a beautiful swimmer, who comes to grief on rocks and dies.
His body is then retrieved and laid out in a barn, with others, to be mourned just as the slain soldiers in the Revolutionary War were mourned by General Washington. At the end of the poem, all of the restored sleepers begin to awaken, an event described in terms of reconciliation and resurrection:. I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known! It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appoint- ments with all,. This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,. Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. Does the daylight astonish? Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, con- formity goes to the fourth-remov'd,.
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,. In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,. I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,.
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is my- self,. And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,. I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,. The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. Press close bare-bosom'd night—press close magnetic nourishing night!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love! We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,. Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,.
Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation,. Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them? I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,. Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified? What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder,. The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel. Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time abso- lutely.
This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches,. This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,. And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt,. And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the cur- rent and index. By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their coun- terpart of on the same terms. And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,. I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,. If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,. Root of wash'd sweet-flag! Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you.
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,. Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friend- ship I take again. A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the meta- physics of books.
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,. The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,. We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the day- break. With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,. My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,. Happiness, which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.
My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,. To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,. Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,. Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,. The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,.
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronoun- cing a death-sentence,. The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,. The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streak- ing engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,. The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,. The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,.
They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violoncello, 'tis the young man's heart's complaint,. It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them,. It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves,.
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,. If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough. To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand. My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,.
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture- fields,. They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,. I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,. I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. You villain touch! Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,.
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,. And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,. And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,.
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,. In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,. I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,. Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,.
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,. They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession. Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,. Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving. His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning. By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen,. Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,.
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,. Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river,. Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,.
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,. Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;. Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,. Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters,. Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax,.
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,. Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;. Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,. Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,. Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold- bug drops through the dark,.
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,. Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shud- dering of their hides,.
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;. Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,. Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,. Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating in it my- self and looking composedly down,.
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,. Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,. Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupt- ing below;. Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments,. Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,.
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,. At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter,. At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw,. At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;. Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps,. Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,.
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,. Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,. Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,.
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