Category Walt Whitman

As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: “Love has no…

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?   Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close…

You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs, And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row; You tokens diminute and lorn—(not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom—no grain of August now;) You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you…

¹You felons on trial in courts; You convicts in prison-cells—you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron; Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison? Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are…

[The sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.] A song, a poem of itself—the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm…

YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also, Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles, Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o’erweening, mocking voice, Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward.  …

Years of the modern! years of the unperform’d! Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas, I see not America only, not only Liberty’s nation but other nations preparing, I see tremendous entrances and exits, new…

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 and darken’d me, Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,…

—————   YEAR of meteors! brooding year! I would bind in words retrospective, some of your deeds and signs; I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad; I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the…

World, take good notice, silver stars fading, Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching, Coals thirty-six, baleful and burning, Scarlet, significant, hands off warning, Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.