When I heard at the Close of the Day. by Walt Whitman
WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d; And else, when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy; But the day when I rose at dawn […]
What think You I take my Pen in Hand? by Walt Whitman
WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? The splendors of the past day? Or the splendor of the night that envelopes me? Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?—No; But I […]
What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal; And with him horse and foot—and parks of artillery, And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic […]
What General has a Good Army. by Walt Whitman
WHAT General has a good army in himself, has a good army; He happy in himself, or she happy in herself, is happy, But I tell you you cannot be happy by others, any more than you can beget or conceive a child by others. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem […]
What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
WHAT best I see in thee, Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways, Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle, Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm’d upon, Who walk’d with kings with even pace […]
What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name? ————— The End And […]
We Two—How Long We were Fool’d. by Walt Whitman
WE two—how long we were fool’d! Now transmuted, we swiftly escape, as Nature escapes; We are Nature—long have we been absent, but now we return; We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, bark; We are bedded in the ground—we are rocks; We are oaks—we grow in the openings side by side; We browse—we are two among […]
We Two Boys Together Clinging. by Walt Whitman
WE two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making, Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching, Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving, No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, […]
Visor’d. by Walt Whitman
A MASK—a perpetual natural disguiser of herself, Concealing her face, concealing her form, Changes and transformations every hour, every moment, Falling upon her even when she sleeps. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry […]
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field. by Walt Whitman
VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night: When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return’d, with a look I shall never forget; One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the […]
Turn, O Libertad. by Walt Whitman
TURN, O Libertad, for the war is over, (From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world,) Turn from lands retrospective, recording proofs of the past; From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past; From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste; Turn to […]
To You. by Walt Whitman
STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you? ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry […]
To Thee, Old Cause! by Walt Whitman
TO thee, old Cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause! Thou stern, remorseless, sweet Idea! Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands! After a strange, sad war—great war for thee, (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee;) These chants for thee—the eternal march of thee. Thou orb […]
To the Garden the World. by Walt Whitman
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, after slumber; The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again, Amorous, mature—all beautiful to me—all wondrous; My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays […]
To One Shortly to Die. by Walt Whitman
1 FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it, I do not […]
To Him that was Crucified. by Walt Whitman
MY spirit to yours, dear brother; Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you; I do not sound your name, but I understand you, (there are others also;) I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since—and those […]
To Foreign Lands. by Walt Whitman
I HEARD that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle, the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy; Therefore I send you my poems, that you behold in them what you wanted. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster […]
To a Western Boy. by Walt Whitman
O BOY of the West! To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of mine: Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins; If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers, Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve […]
To a Pupil. by Walt Whitman
IS reform needed? Is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul, that when […]
To a President. by Walt Whitman
ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn’d of Nature—of the politics of Nature, you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality; You have not seen that only such as they are for These States, And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift […]
To a Locomotive in Winter. by Walt Whitman
THEE for my recitative! Thee in the driving storm, even as now—the snow—the winter-day declining; Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive; Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel; Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides; Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now […]
To a Historian. by Walt Whitman
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, rulers and priests; I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own rights, Pressing the pulse of the […]
To a foil’d European Revolutionaire. by Walt Whitman
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 number of failures, Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, […]
To a Common Prostitute. by Walt Whitman
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 glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl, I appoint with […]
To a Certain Civilian. by Walt Whitman
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 not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand—nor am I now; (I have been born of the same as the war was born; The […]
To a Certain Cantatrice. by Walt Whitman
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 the race; Some brave confronter of despots—some daring rebel; —But I see that what I was reserving, belongs to you just as much as to […]
Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
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 Absolute Success, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to […]
Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
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 earth at large, whispering through medium of me; Of vista—Suppose some sight in arriere, through the formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
AS I sit with others, at a great feast, suddenly, while the music is playing, To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral, in mist, of a wreck at sea; Of certain ships—how they sail from port with flying streamers, and wafted kisses—and that is the last of them! Of the solemn and […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
OF what I write from myself—As if that were not the resumé; Of Histories—As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding poems; As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as the preceding poems; As if here were not the amount of all nations, and of […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
AS they draw to a close, Of what underlies the precedent songs—of my aims in them; Of the seed I have sought to plant in them; Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them; (For them—for them have I lived—In them my work is done;) Of many an aspiration fond—of many a dream […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
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 believe in men. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
OF persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; To me, all that those persons have arrived at, sinks away from them, except as it results to their Bodies and Souls, So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked; And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and mocks […]
Thought. by Walt Whitman
OF Justice—As if Justice could be anything but the same ample law, expounded by natural judges and saviors, As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository […]
Thou Reader. by Walt Whitman
THOU reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I, Therefore for thee the following chants. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic works. Here […]
Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. by Walt Whitman
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 and spreading blue; O sun of noon rufulgent! my special word to thee. Hear me illustrious! Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee, […]
This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful. by Walt Whitman
THIS moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful; It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy, France, Spain—or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India—talking other dialects; And it seems to me if […]
This Dust was Once the Man. by Walt Whitman
THIS dust was once the Man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of These States. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]
This Day, O Soul. by Walt Whitman
THIS day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror; Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay—But the cloud has pass’d, and the tarnish gone; … Behold, O Soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror, Faithfully showing you all the things of the world. ————— The End And that’s the […]
This Compost. by Walt Whitman
1 SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other […]