Walt Whitman Poems

PENSIVE and faltering,
The words, the dead, I write;
For living are the Dead;
...

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
...

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
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BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness--these forms--the power of motion,
The least insect or animal--the senses--eyesight--love;
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MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever,
To stand the cold or heat--to take good aim with a gun--to sail a
boat--to manage horses--to beget superb children,
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May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past
life,
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with
...

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
...

THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,
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YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also;
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles!
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns--I hear the o'erweening, mocking
...