#AmericanWriters #XIXCentury #FreeVerse #LeavesOfGrass
Let that which stood in front go b… Let that which was behind advance… Let bigots, fools, unclean persons… Let the old propositions be postpo… Let a man seek pleasure everywhere…
As consequent from store of summer… Or wayward rivulets in autumn flow… Or many a herb—lined brook’s retic… Or subterranean sea—rills making f… Songs of continued years I sing.
Suddenly out of its stale and drow… Like lightning it le’pt forth half… Its feet upon the ashes and the ra… O hope and faith! O aching close of exiled patriots’…
A batter’d, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far,… Pent by the sea and dark rebelliou… Sore, stiff with many toils, sicke… I take my way along the island’s e…
I am he that aches with amorous lo… Does the earth gravitate? Does no… matter? So the Body of me, to all I meet,…
I believe in you my soul, the othe… And you must not be abased to the… Loafe with me on the grass, loose… Not words, not music or rhyme I w… Only the lull I like, the hum of…
Did we count great, O soul, to pe… Absorbing deep and full from thoug… But now from thee to me, caged bir… Filling the air, the lonesome room… Is it not just as great, O soul?
Word over all, beautiful as the sk… Beautiful that war and all its dee… That the hands of the sisters Dea… again, and ever again, this solid… For my enemy is dead, a man divine…
You sea! I resign myself to you a… I behold from the beach your crook… I believe you refuse to go back wi… We must have a turn together, I u… Cushion me soft, rock me in billow…
When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the rou… of day and night,) saying, He is m… But out spake too the Soul of man… Nay he is mine alone;
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak gro… All alone stood it and the moss hu… Without any companion it grew ther… And its look, rude, unbending, lus… But I wonder’d how it could utter…
As they draw to a close, Of what underlies the precedent so… Of the seed I have sought to plan… Of joy, sweet joy, through many a… (For them, for them have I lived,…
Of the terrible doubt of appearanc… Of the uncertainty after all—that… That may-be reliance and hope are… That may-be identity beyond the gr… May-be the things I perceive—the…
The little one sleeps in its cradl… I lift the gauze and look a long t… The youngster and the red-faced gi… I peeringly view them from the top… The suicide sprawls on the bloody…
Still though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,)… I leave in him revolt, (O latent… indispensable fire!)
