Works

Did YOU ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you seek the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes?
Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?...

Be composed, be at ease with me, I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature;
Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;...

Courage yet! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv'd, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quell'd by one or two failures, or any number of failures,...

You who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests;...

Thee for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm, even as now the snow the winter-day declining;
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;...

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn'd of Nature, of the politics of Nature, you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality;...

Is reform needed? Is it through you?
The greater the reform needed, the greater the personality you need to accomplish it.

You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?...

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,...

O boy of the West!
To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of mine:
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins;...

I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great Sea.

To the East and to the West;
To the man of the Seaside State, and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the North, to the Southerner I love;...

Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face,
We must separate awhile, Here! take from my lips this kiss.
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;
So long!, And I hope we shall meet again.

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;...

Wandering at morn,
Emerging from the night, from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,
Yearning for thee, harmonious Union! thee, Singing Bird divine!...

What am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear, it never tires me.

To you, your name also;...

What General has a good army in himself, has a good army;
He happy in himself, or she happy in herself, is happy,
But I tell you you cannot be happy by others, any more than you can beget or conceive a child by others.

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd;...

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;...

Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless,
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
...

With all thy gifts, America,
(Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,)
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee, With these, and like of these, vouchsafed to thee,...