God

Thought of the Infinite - the All!
Be thou my God.

Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade!
Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.

Thou - thou, the Ideal Man!
Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
Complete in Body, and dilate in Spirit,
Be thou my God.

O Death - (for Life has served its turn;)
Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion!
Be thou my God.

Aught, aught, of mightiest, best, I see, conceive, or know,
(To break the stagnant tie - thee, thee to free, O Soul,)
Be thou my God.

Or thee, Old Cause, when'er advancing;
All great Ideas, the races' aspirations,
All that exalts, releases thee, my Soul!
All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,
Be ye my Gods!

Or Time and Space!
Or shape of Earth, divine and wondrous!
Or shape in I myself - or some fair shape, I, viewing, worship,
Or lustrous orb of Sun, or star by night:
Be ye my Gods.

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist, often considered one of the most influential poets in the American canon. His work broke the boundaries of poetic form and is known for its free verse style. Whitman’s most famous collection, 'Leaves of Grass', celebrates democracy, nature, love, and friendship. He had a significant impact on later literary traditions and is often referred to as the father of free verse.

Walt Whitman

Who Is Now Reading This?

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

Are You The New Person, Drawn Toward Me?

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

I Sit And Look Out

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

Pensive And Faltering

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

English

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Song Of The Universal

Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.

By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born conceal'd or unconceal'd, the seed is waiting.

Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.

Yet again, lo! the Soul above all science;
For it, has History gather'd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.

In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
...

Walt Whitman

Prayer Of Columbus

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, sicken'd, and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island's edge,
Venting a heavy heart.

I am too full of woe!
Haply, I may not live another day;
I can not rest, O God - I can not eat or drink or sleep,
Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,
Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee - commune with Thee,
Report myself once more to Thee.

Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
(My long and crowded life of active work - not adoration merely;)
Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth;
Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations;
Thou knowest how,...

Walt Whitman

Deity.

No personal; a God divinely crowned
With gold and raised upon a golden throne
Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods
Man this or that, and little more than man!

And shalt thou see Him individual?
Not till the freed intelligence hath sought
Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love,
Piercing the singing cycles under God,
Their iridescent evolutions orbed
In wild prismatic splendors, shall it see
Through God-propinquity become a god
See, lightening out of spheric harmonies,
Resplendencies of empyrean light,
Prisms and facets of ten million beams
Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays,
And in this - eyes of burning sapphire, eyes
Deep as the music of the beautiful;
And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows,
As they were lilies of seraphic fire;<...

Madison Julius Cawein

Chanting The Square Deific

Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides;
Out of the old and new--out of the square entirely divine,
Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)... from this side Jehovah am I,
Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;
Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any;
Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments;
As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,
Aged beyond computation--yet ever new--ever with those mighty laws rolling,
Relentless, I forgive no man--whoever sins, dies--I will have that man's life;
Therefore let none expect mercy--Have the seasons, gravitation, the appointed days, mercy?--No more have I;
But as the seasons, and gravitation--and as all the appointed days, that forgive not,
I dispense from this side judgments ine...

Walt Whitman

Invocation.

        I.

O Life! O Death! O God!
Have I not striven?
Have I not known thee, God,
As thy stars know Heaven?
Have I not held thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue,
Of nights that feel thy dew?
Have I not known thee true,
O God that keepest?


        II.

O God, my father, God!
Didst give me fire
To rise above the clod,
And soar, aspire!
What tho' I strive and strive,
And all my life says live,
The sneerful scorn of men
But beats it down again;
And, O! sun-centered high,
O God! grand poet!
Beneath thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
And thou dost know it!


        III.

They know thee beautiful!
They know thee bitter!
And all their e...

Madison Julius Cawein

De Profundis

The Two Greetings.

I.

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirld for a million æons thro the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescenther dark orb
Touchd with earths lightthou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live, and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee,...

Alfred Lord Tennyson