Life poems
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Delicate Cluster.
© Walt Whitman
DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watchd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Me Imperturbe.
© Walt Whitman
ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all, or mistress of allaplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as theypassive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought;
Two Rivulets.
© Walt Whitman
TWO Rivulets side by side,
Two blended, parallel, strolling tides,
Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey.
Mystic Trumpeter, The.
© Walt Whitman
1
HARK! some wild trumpetersome strange musician,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.
Shut Not Your Doors, &c.
© Walt Whitman
SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-filld shelves, yet needed most, I bring;
Forth from the army, the war emerginga book I have made,
The words of my book nothingthe drift of it everything;
City Dead-House, The.
© Walt Whitman
BY the City Dead-House, by the gate,
As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pausefor lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought;
Her corpse they deposit unclaimdit lies on the damp brick pavement;
Dresser, The.
© Walt Whitman
1
AN old man bending, I come, among new faces,
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children,
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me;
Respondez!
© Walt Whitman
RESPONDEZ! Respondez!
(The war is completedthe price is paidthe title is settled beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Salut au Monde.
© Walt Whitman
1
O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such joind unended links, each hookd to the next!
States!
© Walt Whitman
STATES!
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?
To a foild European Revolutionaire.
© Walt Whitman
1
COURAGE yet! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subservd, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quelld by one or two failures, or any number of failures,
Prayer of Columbus.
© Walt Whitman
A BATTERD, wreckd old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea, and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sickend, and nigh to death,
From Pent-up Aching Rivers.
© Walt Whitman
FROM pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determind to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonantsinging the phallus,
Warble for Lilac-Time.
© Walt Whitman
WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Natures sake, and sweet lifes sakeand
deaths the same as lifes,
Souvenirs of earliest summerbirds eggs, and the first berries;
A Carol of Harvest, for 1867
© Walt Whitman
1
A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farmsa song of the soil of fields.
Who is now Reading This?
© Walt Whitman
WHO is now reading this?
May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life,
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision,
As I Watchd the Ploughman Ploughing.
© Walt Whitman
AS I watchd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fieldsor the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
Souvenirs of Democracy.
© Walt Whitman
THE business man, the acquirer vast,
After assiduous years, surveying results, preparing for departure,
Devises houses and lands to his childrenbequeaths stocks, goodsfunds for a
school
Song of the Universal.
© Walt Whitman
1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
I was Looking a Long While.
© Walt Whitman
I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these
chantsand now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
