Works

In cabin'd ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves - the large imperious waves - In such,
Or some lone bark, buoy'd on the dense marine,...

In the new garden, in all the parts,
In cities now, modern, I wander,
Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet,
Days, places, indifferent - though various, the same,...

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,...

I saw old General at bay;
(Old as he was, his grey eyes yet shone out in battle like stars;)
His small force was now completely hemm'd in, in his works;...

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;...

I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore,
But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light - that one has utterly disappeared,...

I was looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants - and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)...

I will take an egg out of the robin's nest in the orchard,
I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden, and go and preach to the world;...

A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;...

Locations and times - what is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors - what is it in me that corresponds with them?

I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe-hush'd, I study them long and long.

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,...

Not heat flames up and consumes,
Not sea-waves hurry in and out,
Not the air, delicious and dry, the air of the ripe summer, bears lightly along white down-balls of myriads of seeds,...

Of him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was dead;
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love - but he was not in that place;
And I dream'd I wander'd, searching among burial-places, to find him;...

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all - that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,...

O living always - always dying!
O the burials of me, past and present!
O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever!
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not - I am content;)...

Once I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;...

One hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
...

One song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee - the Future.

I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality;...

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,...