#1855 #AmericanWriters #LeavesOfGrass
As down the stage again, With Spanish hat and plumes, and… Back from the fading lessons of th… How much from thee! the revelation… (So firm—so liquid-soft—again that…
Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peace… only, But now, ah now, to learn from cri… with direst fate and recoiling not…
Rise O days from your fathomless… Long for my soul hungering gymnast… Long I roam’d amid the woods of t… I travel’d the prairies over and s… Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus,
America always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida’s green peninsula!… Louisiana! Always the cotton—fiel… Always California’s golden hills…
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok… Well-begotten, and rais’d by a per… After roaming many lands, lover of… Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or… Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my…
A mask, a perpetual natural disgui… Concealing her face, concealing he… Changes and transformations every… Falling upon her even when she sle…
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,
Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother’s bowels draw… Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb… Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown,… Resting the grass amid and upon,
Out of the cradle endlessly rockin… Out of the mocking-bird’s throat,… Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fie… bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, ba…
Afoot and light-hearted I take to… Healthy, free, the world before me… The long brown path before me, lea… Henceforth I ask not good-fortune… Henceforth I whimper no more, pos…
In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-w… Escaped from the lite that exhibit… From all the standards hitherto pu… conformities,
AS a strong bird on pinions free, Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenw… Such be the thought I’d think to—… Such be the recitative I’d bring… The conceits of the poets of other…
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…
The prairie-grass dividing—its spe… I demand of it the spiritual corre… Demand the most copious and close… Demand the blades to rise of words… Those of the open atmosphere, coar…
(Volunteer of 1861-2, at Washingt… Centenarian.) Give me your hand old Revolutiona… The hill-top is nigh, but a few st… Up the path you have follow’d me w…