#1855 #AmericanWriters #LeavesOfGrass
Only themselves understand themsel… As souls only understand souls.
A mask, a perpetual natural disgui… Concealing her face, concealing he… Changes and transformations every… Falling upon her even when she sle…
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?
A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thou… A chorus of dryads, fading, depart… A murmuring, fateful, giant voice,… Voice of a mighty dying tree in th…
O, Death! a black and pierceless… Hangs round thee, and the future s… No eye may see, no mind may grasp That mystery of fate. This braid, which now alternate th…
Who has gone farthest? for I woul… And who has been just? for I woul… And who most cautious? for I woul… And who has been happiest? O I th… happier than I,
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,…
YEARS of the unperform’d! your h… parting away for more august drama… I see not America only—I see not… but other nations preparing; I see tremendous entrances and exi…
Stretch’d and still lies the midni… Two great hulls motionless on the… Our vessel riddled and slowly sink… The captain on the quarter-deck co… Near by the corpse of the child th…
Have you learn’d lessons only of t… tender with you, and stood aside f… Have you not learn’d great lessons… themselves against you? or who tre… the passage with you?
The noble sire fallen on evil days… I saw with hand uplifted, menacing… (Memories of old in abeyance, love… The insane knife toward the Mothe… The noble son on sinewy feet advan…
COME closer to me; Push close, my lovers, and take th… Yield closer and closer, and give… This is unfinish’d business with m… (I was chill’d with the cold types…
Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky… Ah you foes that in conflict have… (For what is my life or any man’s… the incessant war?) You degradations, you tussle with…
A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promont… Mark’d how to explore the vacant v… It launch’d forth filament, filame… Ever unreeling them, ever tireless…
(“The Seventeenth—the finest Regi… Through the soft evening air enwin… Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing… In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and… Electric, pensive, turbulent, arti…