Walt Whitman Poems

BROTHER of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
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YEAR that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough--yet the air I breathed froze me;
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me;
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WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear;
Labial gossip of night--sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending--mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
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O MATER! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
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A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
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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,
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O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next!
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IN cabin'd ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves--the large imperious
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When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life?
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THE business man, the acquirer vast,
After assiduous years, surveying results, preparing for departure,
Devises houses and lands to his children--bequeaths stocks, goods--
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