Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me? Did you seek the civilian’s peacef… Did you find what I sang erewhile… Why I was not singing erewhile fo… am I now;
Lo, Victress on the peaks, Where thou with mighty brow regard… (The world O Libertad, that vainl… Out of its countless beleaguering… Dominant, with the dazzling sun ar…
Spirit whose work is done—spirit o… Ere departing fade from my eyes yo… Spirit of gloomiest fears and doub… Spirit of many a solemn day and ma… That with muttering voice through…
Adieu O soldier, You of the rude campaigning, (whic… The rapid march, the life of the c… The hot contention of opposing fro… Red battles with their slaughter,…
Turn O Libertad, for the war is o… From it and all henceforth expandi… sweeping the world, Turn from lands retrospective reco… From the singers that sing the tra…
To the leaven’d soil they trod cal… (Forth from my tent emerging for g… In the freshness the forenoon air,… again to peace restored, To the fiery fields emanative and…
When lilacs last in the dooryard b… And the great star early droop’d i… I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn wit… Ever-returning spring, trinity sur… Lilac blooming perennial and droop…
O Captain! my Captain, our fearfu… The ship has weather’d every rack,… The port is near, the bells I hea… While follow eyes the steady keel,… But O heart! heart! heart!
Hush’d be the camps to-day, And soldiers let us drape our war-… And each with musing soul retire t… Our dear commander’s death. No more for him life’s stormy conf…
This dust was once the Man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute—u… Against the foulest crime in histo… Was saved the Union of These Sta…
By blue Ontario’s shore, As I mused of these warlike days… that return no more, A Phantom gigantic superb, with s… Chant me the poem, it said, that c…
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.
For the lands, and for these passi… Now I awhile return to thee, O so… Reclining on thy breast, giving my… Answering the pulses of thy sane a… Tuning a verse for thee.
There was a child went forth every… And the first object he look’d upo… And that object became part of him… Or for many years or stretching cy… The early lilacs became part of th…
Far hence amid an isle of wondrous… Crouching over a grave an ancient… Once a queen, now lean and tatter’… Her old white hair drooping dishev… At her feet fallen an unused royal…
By the city dead-house by the gate… As idly sauntering wending my way… I curious pause, for lo, an outcas… Her corpse they deposit unclaim’d,… The divine woman, her body, I see…
Something startles me where I tho… I withdraw from the still woods I… I will not go now on the pastures… I will not strip the clothes from… I will not touch my flesh to the e…
Courage yet, my brother or my sist… Keep on—Liberty is to be subserv’… That is nothing that is quell’d by… failures, Or by the indifference or ingratit…
Nations ten thousand years before… thousand years before these States… Garner’d clusters of ages that men… and travel’d their course and pass… What vast-built cities, what order…
Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d p… On Time, Space, Reality—on such… Prudence. The last explanation always remain… immortality.
O sight of shame, and pain, and do… O fearful thought—a convict Soul! Rang the refrain along the hall, t… Rose to the roof, the vaults of he… Pouring in floods of melody in ton…
Warble me now for joy of lilac-tim… Sort me O tongue and lips for Nat… Gather the welcome signs, (as chil… Put in April and May, the hylas c… Bees, butterflies, the sparrow wit…
What may we chant, O thou within… What tablets, outlines, hang for t… The life thou lived’st we know not… But that thou walk’dst thy years i… Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor gl…
Out from behind this bending rough… These lights and shades, this dram… This common curtain of the face co… you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tea…
Vocalism, measure, concentration,… to speak words; Are you full-lung’d and limber-lip… practice? from physique? Do you move in these broad lands a…
My spirit to yours dear brother, Do not mind because many sounding… I do not sound your name, but I u… I specify you with joy O my comra… who are with you, before and since…
You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you… handcuff’d with iron, Who am I too that I am not on tri… Me ruthless and devilish as any, t…
Laws for creations, For strong artists and leaders, fo… literats for America, For noble savans and coming musici… All must have reference to the ens…
Be composed—be at ease with me—I… Not till the sun excludes you, do… Not till the waters refuse to glis… My girl, I appoint with you an ap… charge you that you make preparati…
I was looking a long while for the… It is not in those paged fables in… It is no more in the legends than… It is in the present—it is this ea… It is in Democracy—in this Americ…
Of persons arrived at high positio… and the like; (To me all that those persons have… except as it results to their bodi… So that often to me they appear ga…
Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else b… Whether I walk the streets of Man… Or dart my sight over the roofs of… Or wade with naked feet along the…
Where the city’s ceaseless crowd m… Withdrawn I join a group of child… By the curb toward the edge of the… A knife-grinder works at his wheel… Bending over he carefully holds it…
Is reform needed? Is it through y… The greater the reform needed, the… to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would s… complexion, clean and sweet?
Unfolded out of the folds of the w… always to come unfolded; Unfolded only out of the superbest… superbest man of the earth; Unfolded out of the friendliest wo…
What am I, after all, but a child… name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tir… To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing bu…
Who includes diversity and is Nat… Who is the amplitude of the earth,… the earth, and the great charity o… Who has not look’d forth from the… whose brain held audience with mes…
Others may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the runn… aught else, Till it has well inhaled the atmos… prairie-scent,
Who learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice, chur… The stupid and the wise thinker, p… porter and customer, Editor, author, artist, and school…
All submit to them, where they sit… analysis, in the Soul; Not traditions—not the outer autho… the judges of outer authorities, a… They corroborate as they go, only…
On my northwest coast in the midst… fishermen’s group stands watching; Out on the lake, expanding before… spearing salmon; The canoe, a dim and shadowy thing…
O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and str… Like some proud ship that led the… Beseems to-day a wreck driven by t… And ‘mid its teeming madden’d half…
In a far-away northern county in t… Lives my farmer friend, the theme… There they bring him the three-yea… break them, He will take the wildest steer in…
For the Inauguration of a Public… An old man’s thought of school, An old man gathering youthful memo… cannot. Now only do I know you,
Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloom… Yearning for thee harmonious Unio… Thee coil’d in evil times my count… every meanness, treason thrust upo…
(“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…
With all thy gifts America, Standing secure, rapidly tending,… Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed… vouchsafed to thee, What if one gift thou lackest? (th…
In a little house keep I pictures… It is round, it is only a few inch… Yet behold, it has room for all th… Here the tableaus of life, and her… Here, do you know this? this is ci…
A newer garden of creation, no pri… Dense, joyous, modern, populous mi… With iron interlaced, composite, t… By all the world contributed—freed… The crown and teeming paradise, so…
Proud music of the storm, Blast that careers so free, whistl… Strong hum of forest tree-tops—win… Personified dim shapes—you hidden… You serenades of phantoms with ins…
Singing my days, Singing the great achievements of… Singing the strong light works of… Our modern wonders, (the antique p… In the Old World the east the Su…
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…
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, con...
Let the reformers descend from the… bawling—let an idiot or insane per… Let judges and criminals be transp… in prison—let those that were pris… Let them that distrust birth and d…
To think of time—of all that retro… To think of to-day, and the ages c… Have you guess’d you yourself woul… Have you dreaded these earth-beetl… Have you fear’d the future would b…
Darest thou now O soul, Walk out with me toward the unknow… Where neither ground is for the fe… No map there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of h…
Whispers of heavenly death murmur’… Labial gossip of night, sibilant c… Footsteps gently ascending, mystic… Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of… (Or is it the plashing of tears? t…
Chanting the square deific, out of… Out of the old and new, out of the… Solid, four-sided, (all the sides… Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; Not Time affects me—I am Time, o…
Of him I love day and night I dre… And I dream’d I went where they h… in that place, And I dream’d I wander’d searchin… And I found that every place was…
