#1855 #AmericanWriters #LeavesOfGrass
Only themselves understand themsel… As souls only understand souls.
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free… Away from books, away from art, th… Thee fully forth emerging, silent,… lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.
My city’s fit and noble name resum… Choice aboriginal name, with marve… A rocky founded island—shores wher… going, hurrying sea waves.
And whence and why come you? We know not whence, (was the answe… We only know that we drift here wi… That we linger’d and lagg’d—but we… To make the passing shower’s concl…
How solemn as one by one, As the ranks returning worn and sw… As the faces the masks appear, as… (As I glance upward out of this p… you are,)
A SONG of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets… A song of farms—a song of the soil… A song with the smell of sun-dried… handle the pitch-fork;
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…
One’s-Self I sing, a simple separ… Yet utter the word Democratic, th… Of physiology from top to toe I s… Not physiognomy alone nor brain al… The Female equally with the Male…
Houses and rooms are full of perfu… I breathe the fragrance myself and… The distillation would intoxicate… The atmosphere is not a perfume, i… It is for my mouth forever, I am…
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…
Not heat flames up and consumes, Not sea-waves hurry in and out, Not the air, delicious and dry, th… lightly along white down-balls of… Wafted, sailing gracefully, to dro…
Ah, not this marble, dead and cold… Far from its base and shaft expand… comprehending, Thou, Washington, art all the wor… alone, America,
To The States, or any one of them… Resist much, obey little; Once unquestioning obedience, once… Once fully enslaved, no nation, st…
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,…
The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finish’d S… On the pavement here, and there be… Down a new-made double grave. Lo, the moon ascending,