Leaves of Grass
#Americans #XIXCentury
That which eludes this verse and a… Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d… Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness n… And yet the pulse of every heart a… Which you and I and all pursuing…
LONG I thought that knowledge al… but obtain knowledge! Then my lands engrossed me—Lands… southern savannas, engrossed me—Fo… be their orator;
Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I kn… Weights of lead, how ye clog and c… Earth to a chamber of mourning tur… voice, Matter is conqueror—matter, triump…
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…
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…
Full of life, now, compact, visibl… I, forty years old the Eighty-thi… To one a century hence, or any num… To you, yet unborn, these, seeking… When you read these, I, that was…
I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of th… The fields of art and learning, pl… To glean eidolons. Put in thy chants said he,
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…
Passage O soul to India! Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the… Not you alone, proud truths of the… Nor you alone, ye facts of modern… But myths and fables of eld, Asia…
Ages and ages returning at interva… Undestroy’d, wandering immortal, Lusty, phallic, with the potent or… I, chanter of Adamic songs, Through the new garden the West,…
O tan-faced prairie-boy, Before you came to camp came many… Praises and presents came and nour… You came, taciturn, with nothing t… When lo! more than all the gifts o…
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…
As I sit in twilight late alone b… Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes—o… Of the vacant names, as unindented… The brief truce after battle, with… trenches
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.
THINK of the Soul; I swear to you that body of yours… somehow to live in other spheres; I do not know how, but I know it… Think of loving and being loved;
