Leaves of Grass
#Americans #XIXCentury
I see before me now a traveling ar… Below a fertile valley spread, wit… Behind, the terraced sides of a mo… Broken, with rocks, with clinging… The numerous camp-fires scatter’d…
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 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,
Forms, qualities, lives, humanity,… The ones known, and the ones unkno… The stars themselves, some shaped,… Wonders as of those countries, the… whatever they may be,
A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thou… A chorus of dryads, fading, depart… A murmuring, fateful, giant voice,… Voice of a mighty dying tree in th…
YEARS of the unperform’d! your h… parting away for more august drama… I see not America only—I see not… but other nations preparing; I see tremendous entrances and exi…
The commonplace I sing; How cheap is health! how cheap nob… Abstinence, no falsehood, no glutt… The open air I sing, freedom, tol… (Take here the mainest lesson—less…
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…
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…
Native moments—when you come upon… Give me now libidinous joys only, Give me the drench of my passions,… To-day I go consort with Nature’s… I am for those who believe in loos…
Facing west, from California’s sh… Inquiring, tireless, seeking what… I, a child, very old, over waves,… land of migrations, look afar, Look off the shores of my Western…
COME closer to me; Push close, my lovers, and take th… Yield closer and closer, and give… possess. This is unfinish’d business with m…
After a long, long course, hundred… Accumulations, rous’d love and joy… Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponder… Coating, compassing, covering—afte… Then only may these songs reach fr…
Here first the duties of to-day, t… Wealth, order, travel, shelter, pr… As of the building of some varied,… Whence to arise inevitable in time… The solid-planted spires tall shoo…
Steaming the northern rapids—(an o… A sudden memory-flash comes back,… Here waiting for the sunrise, gazi… Again ’tis just at morning—a heavy… Again the trembling, laboring vess…