Leaves of Grass

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years o...

First O songs for a prelude, Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city, How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue, How at once with lithe limbs...

As consequent from store of summer rains, Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations, Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, Songs...

Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking! One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce, steamers, sails, And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle--migh...

To the garden the world anew ascending, Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding, The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being, Curious here behold my resurrection afte...

In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures, profits,...

Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand, The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam, And tawny streaks and shades...

By blue Ontario’s shore, As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me, Chan...

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where...

I shall go forth, I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long, Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will suddenly cease.

Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states, Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, Only the...

1 Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother, After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, Dweller in Mannahatta...

1 Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother’s bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced...

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous crit...

1 O take my hand Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next, Each answering all, each sharing the earth with...

Then we burst forth, we float, In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them, Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I s...

I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle. How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! Every man holds his revolver, marching...

1 When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

1 I wander all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and...

After all not to create only, or found only, But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded, To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free, To fill the gross the...

1 Singing my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the...

Workmen and Workwomen! Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of me, what would it amount to? Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise st...

O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for the dropping of raindrops in a song! O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me...

1 Thou Mother with thy equal brood, Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only, A special song before I go I’d sing o’er all the rest, For thee, the future.

To think that the sun rose in the east--that men and women were flexible, real, alive--that every thing was alive, To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our...

1 A song of the rolling earth, and of words according, Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words,...

Always our old feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula--always the priceless delta of Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas, Always California’s golden hi...

1 Proud music of the storm, Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies, Strong hum of forest tree-tops--wind of the mountains, Personified dim shapes--you hidden...

A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother, How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? Tell him to send me the signs. And I stand before t...

1 A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, gi...

Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold, In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers, Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around,...

A batter’d, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicke...