Poems by Walt Whitman

"That Angels are human forms, or men, I have seen a thousand times. I have also frequently told them that men in the Christian world are in such gross ignorance respecting Angel...

Walt Whitman was born at the farm-village of West Hills, Long Island, in the State of New York, and about thirty miles distant from the capital, on the 31st of May 1819. His fat...

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Shelley, who knew what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whi...

The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,--Come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what...

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait a while--perhaps a generation or two,--dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place--th...

See! steamers steaming through my poems! See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the m...

When the psalm sings, instead of the singer; When the script preaches, instead of the preacher; When the pulpit descends and goes, instead of the carver that carved the supporti...

Her shape arises, She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever; The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled; She knows the thoughts as she pa...

When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements; When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love; When the round-mouthed guns, out of the sm...

Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke! And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities! Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms! you have done me goo...

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behin...

His own parents; He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb, and birthed him, They gave this child more of themselves than that; They gave him afterwar...

As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Wher...

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you; You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me, as of a dream). I have somewhere surely live...

Amelioration is one of the earth's words; The earth neither lags nor hastens; It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump; It is not half beautiful o...

He puts things in their attitudes; He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love; He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associat...

Consolator most mild, the promised one advancing, With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I, Foretold by prophets and poets, in their most wrapt prophecies and poems; Fro...