Selected Poems

Walt Whitman

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780486131337
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

In his unconventional verse, Walt Whitman spoke in a powerful, sensual, oratorical, and inspiring voice. His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was a long-term project that the poet compared to the building of a cathedral or the slow growth of a tree. During his lifetime, from 1819 to 1892, it went through nine editions. Today it is regarded as a landmark of American literature.
This volume contains 24 poems from Leaves of Grass, offering a generous sampling of Whitman's best and most representative verses. Featured works include `I Hear America Singing,` `I Sing the Body Electric,` `Song of the Open Road,` `Out of Cradle Endlessly Rocking,` `When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,` and `O Captain! My Captain!`—all reprinted from an authoritative text.

By Blue Ontario’s Shore

1

By blue Ontario’s shore,

As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more,

A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,

Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America, chant me the carol of victory,

And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,

And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.

(Democracy, the destin’d conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,

And death and infidelity at every step.)

2

A Nation announcing itself,

I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,

I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,

What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,

We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,

We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,

We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,

We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,

We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world,

From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,

Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.

(O Mother—O Sisters dear!

If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us,

It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

3

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?

There can be any number of supremes—one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another.

All is eligible to all,

All is for individuals, all is for you,

No condition is prohibited, not God’s or any.

All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

4

Piety and conformity to them that like,

Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,

I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,

Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!

I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet,

Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

(With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,

These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)

O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?

If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.

Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,

Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice,

Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,

Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.

5

Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,

America brings builders, and brings its own styles.

The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and pass’d to other spheres,

A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.

America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards,

Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents,

Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under their forms,

Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,

Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days,

That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,

And that he shall be fittest for his days.

Any period one nation must lead,

One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.

These States are the amplest poem,

Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,

Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,

Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,

Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,

Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.

6

Land of lands and bards to corroborate!

Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred face,

To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d both mother’s and father’s,

His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,

Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,

Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,

Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,

Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits,

Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,

Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,

Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,

If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them North or South,

Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever is between them,

Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia,

Tangles as tangled in him as any cranebake or swamp,

He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,

Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,

Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,

His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil,

Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,

Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,

Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,

The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation of the Constitution,

The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants,

The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure and impregnable,

The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers,

Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,

Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the membe...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Table of Contents
• I Hear America Singing
• Starting from Paumanok
• I Sing the Body Electric
• Once I Pass’d through a Populous City
• Recorders Ages Hence
• I Hear It Was Charged against Me
• Salut au Monde!
• Song of the Open Road
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
• Song of the Broad-Axe
• Song of the Redwood-Tree
• A Song for Occupations
• A Song of the Rolling Earth
• Pioneers! O Pioneers!
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
• Beat! Beat! Drums!
• The Wound-Dresser
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
• O Captain! My Captain!
• By Blue Ontario’s Shore
• Passage to India
• Prayer of Columbus
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
• So Long!
• Alphabetical List of Titles
• Alphabetical List of First Lines
• DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS