Thick-Sprinkled Bunting

Thick-sprinkled bunting! Flag of stars!
Long yet your road, fateful flag! long yet your road, and lined with bloody death!
For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world!
All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy banner!
Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest born, to flaunt unrival'd?
O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings,
Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol run up above them all,
Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!

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

Not Youth Pertains To Me

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

What Weeping Face

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

A Boston Ballad, 1854

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

Think Of The Soul

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Delicate Cluster

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean! sunny flag! with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty! ah my woolly white and crimson!
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.

Walt Whitman

Bathed In War's Perfume

Bathed in war's perfume--delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women.

Walt Whitman

Sing Of The Banner At Day-Break

POET.

O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind's voice and that of the drum,
By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's voice,
Low on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the banner at day-break is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see,
My song is there in the open air--and I must sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire and babe's desire--I'll twine them in, I'll put in life;
I'll put the bayonet's flashing point--I'll let bullets and slugs whizz;
(As one carrying a symb...

Walt Whitman

Song For All Seas, All Ships

To-day a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal;
Of unnamed heroes in the ships Of waves spreading and spreading, far as the eye can reach;
Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing;
And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge.

Of Sea-Captains young or old, and the Mates and of all intrepid Sailors;
Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise, nor death dismay,
Pick'd sparingly, without noise, by thee, old Ocean chosen by thee,
Thou Sea, that pickest and cullest the race, in Time, and unitest Nations!
Suckled by thee, old husky Nurse embodying thee!
Indomitable, untamed as thee.

(Ever the heroes, on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,
Ever...

Walt Whitman

O Star Of France

O star of France!
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale - a mastless hulk;
And 'mid its teeming, madden'd, half-drown'd crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman.

Dim, smitten star!
Orb not of France alone - pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,
The struggle and the daring - rage divine for liberty,
Of aspirations toward the far ideal - enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood,
Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.

Star crucified! by traitors sold!
Star panting o'er a land of death - heroic land!
Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.

Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee;
Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'...

Walt Whitman

From Far Dakota's Canons

From far Dakota's cañons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses for breastworks,
The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly maintain'd,
O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!
As sitting in dark days,
Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope,
From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,

Walt Whitman