#1855 #AmericanWriters #LeavesOfGrass
Joy! shipmate—joy! (Pleas’d to my Soul at death I cr… Our life is closed—our life begins… The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last—she leap…
COME, I will make the continent… I will make the most splendid race… I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrade…
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?
America always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula!… Louisiana! Always the cotton—fiel… Always California’s golden hills…
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s… Eastward the sea absorbing, viewin… The tossing waves, the foam, the s… The wild unrest, the snowy, curlin… of waves,
Had I the choice to tally greates… To limn their portraits, stately,… Homer with all his wars and warrio… Or Shakespeare’s woe—entangled Ha… Meter or wit the best, or choice c…
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…
Who goes there? hankering, gross,… How is it I extract strength from… What is a man anyhow? what am I?… All I mark as my own you shall of… Else it were time lost listening t…
I see the sleeping babe, nestling… mother; The sleeping mother and babe—hush’… long and long.
And as to you Death, and you bitt… To his work without flinching the… I see the elder-hand pressing rece… I recline by the sills of the exqu… And mark the outlet, and mark the…
I sit and look out upon all the so… oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from… themselves, remorseful after deeds… I see, in low life, the mother mis…
More experiences and sights, stran… Times again, now mostly just after… Sometimes in spring, oftener in au… plain sight, Camps far or near, the crowded str…
WHY reclining, interrogating? Wh… What deepening twilight! scum floa… Who are they, as bats and night-do… What a filthy Presidentiad! (O so… arctic freezings!)
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’…
SO far, and so far, and on toward… Singing what is sung in this book,… me; But whether I continue beyond thi… Whether I shall dart forth the tr…