All Poems
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How Solemn as One by One.
© Walt Whitman
HOW solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweatyas the men file by where I stand;
As the faces, the masks appearas I glance at the faces, studying the masks;
(As I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you are;)
Not Youth Pertains to Me.
© Walt Whitman
NOT youth pertains to me,
Nor delicatesseI cannot beguile the time with talk;
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant;
In the learnd coterie sitting constraind and stillfor learning. inures
To the Man-of-War-Bird.
© Walt Whitman
THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renewd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Centenarians Story, The.
© Walt Whitman
GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary;
The hill-top is nighbut a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;)
Up the path you have followd me well, spite of your hundred and extra years;
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done;
One Sweeps By.
© Walt Whitman
ONE sweeps by, attended by an immense train,
All emblematic of peacenot a soldier or menial among them.
One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair,
Bivouac on a Mountain Side.
© Walt Whitman
I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting;
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen;
You Felons on Trial in Courts.
© Walt Whitman
YOU felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cellsyou sentenced assassins, chaind and
hand-cuffd
with
Prairie States, The.
© Walt Whitman
A NEWER garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world contributedfreedoms and laws and thrifts society,
Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States.
© Walt Whitman
1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it lept forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the ragsits hands tight to the throats of kings.
Others may Praise what They Like.
© Walt Whitman
OTHERS may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in art, or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this riveralso the western prairie-scent,
And fully exudes it again.
In Former Songs.
© Walt Whitman
1
IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life,
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.
Of the Visage of Things.
© Walt Whitman
OF the visages of thingsAnd of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath;
Of uglinessTo me there is just as much in it as there is in beautyAnd now the
ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me;
Of detected personsTo me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than
Artillerymans Vision, The.
© Walt Whitman
WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
Ox Tamer, The.
© Walt Whitman
IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region,
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen:
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them;
He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him;
Song of the Exposition.
© Walt Whitman
1
AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
As Toilsome I Wanderd.
© Walt Whitman
AS toilsome I wanderd Virginias woods,
To the music of rustling leaves, kickd by my feet, (for twas autumn,)
I markd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier,
Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat, (easily all could I understand;)
Or from that Sea of Time.
© Walt Whitman
1
OR, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the winda double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!
Locations and Times.
© Walt Whitman
LOCATIONS and timeswhat is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and
makes
me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odorswhat is it in me that corresponds with them?
Eidólons.
© Walt Whitman
I MET a Seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons.
Put in thy chants, said he,
What think You I take my Pen in Hand?
© Walt Whitman
WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The battle-ship, perfect-modeld, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full
sail?
