All Poems
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When I read the Book.
© Walt Whitman
WHEN I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a mans life?
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life;
Whispers of Heavenly Death.
© Walt Whitman
WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmurd I hear;
Labial gossip of nightsibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascendingmystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen riverstides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;
Beginners.
© Walt Whitman
HOW they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to anyWhat a paradox appears their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
In Cabind Ships at Sea.
© Walt Whitman
1
IN cabind ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the wavesthe large imperious wavesIn
Germs.
© Walt Whitman
FORMS, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,
The ones known, and the ones unknownthe ones on the stars,
The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,
Wonders as of those countriesthe soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may
I Sit and Look Out.
© Walt Whitman
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after
deeds
done;
Long I Thought that Knowledge.
© Walt Whitman
LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice meO if I could but obtain
knowledge!
Then my lands engrossed meLands of the prairies, Ohios land, the southern
savannas,
Poem of Joys.
© Walt Whitman
1
O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
So Long.
© Walt Whitman
1
TO concludeI announce what comes after me;
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart.
All is Truth.
© Walt Whitman
O ME, man of slack faith so long!
Standing aloofdenying portions so long;
Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth;
Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as
Miracles.
© Walt Whitman
WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
In Midnight Sleep.
© Walt Whitman
1
IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally woundedof that indescribable look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
Adieu to a Soldier.
© Walt Whitman
ADIEU, O soldier!
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing frontsthe long manoeuver,
To Foreign Lands.
© Walt Whitman
I HEARD that you askd 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.
When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloomd.
© Walt Whitman
1
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomd,
And the great star early droopd in the western sky in the night,
I mourndand yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ashes of Soldiers.
© Walt Whitman
ASHES of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumesagain to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.
Song at Sunset.
© Walt Whitman
SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetichour resuming the past!
Inflating my throatyou, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.
Walt Whitman.
© Walt Whitman
1
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
As I Ponderd in Silence.
© Walt Whitman
1
AS I ponderd in silence,
Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arose before me, with distrustful aspect,
To You.
© 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?
