To The States

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns! O north, your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet for I see that These States sleep, for reasons;
(With gathering murk with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake,
South, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

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

Over The Carnage

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

Delicate Cluster

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

To Oratists

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

In Midnight Sleep

Walt Whitman, Simple Poetry

English

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Apostroph

O mater! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!
O race of the future! O women!
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!
O native power only! O beauty!
O yourself! O God! O divine average!
O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers!
O arouse! the dawn bird's throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the cock crowing?
O, as I walk'd the beach, I heard the mournful notes foreboding a tempest--the low, oft-repeated shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;
O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;--O you sailors! O ships! make quick preparation!
O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle!
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up...

Walt Whitman

American Feuillage

America always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath'd Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern Sea--inseparable with the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States--the three and a half millions of square miles;
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main--the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings--Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches;
Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of D...

Walt Whitman

States!

States!
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

Away!
I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and arms,
These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together.

The old breath of life, ever new,
Here! I pass it by contact to you, America.

O mother! have you done much for me?
Behold, there shall from me be much done for you.

There shall from me be a new friendship It shall be called after my name,
It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place,
It shall twist and intertwist them through and around each other
Compact shall they be, showing new signs,
Affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom,
Those who love each other shall b...

Walt Whitman

A Boston Ballad, 1854

To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a good place at the corner--I must stand and see the show.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons--and the apparitions copiously tumbling.

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 stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows--antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phan...

Walt Whitman

Thoughts

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 infidelity;
How few see the arrived models, the Athletes, the Western States or see freedom or spirituality or hold any faith in results,
(But I see the Athletes and I see the results of the war glorious and inevitable and they again leading to other results;)
How the great cities appear How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them;
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on;

Walt Whitman

To The Man-Of-War-Bird

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)

Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shores with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untir...

Walt Whitman