Love poems
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A Promise to California.
© Walt Whitman
A PROMISE to California,
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon:
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust
American
A Boston Ballad, 1854.
© Walt Whitman
TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Heres a good place at the cornerI must stand and see the show.
Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Song of the Universal.
© Walt Whitman
1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City.
© Walt Whitman
ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its
shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain'd me
for love of me;
Last Invocation, The.
© Walt Whitman
1
AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortressd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locksfrom the keep of the well-closed doors,
Longings for Home.
© Walt Whitman
O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-thingsAll moving things, and the trees where I was
bornthe
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone.
© Walt Whitman
ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of lovefingers that wind around tighter than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen;
As At Thy Portals Also Death.
© Walt Whitman
AS at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
1861.
© Walt Whitman
AARMD year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your
To a Western Boy.
© Walt Whitman
O BOY of the West!
To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of mine:
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins;
If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine? 5
Native Moments.
© Walt Whitman
NATIVE moments! when you come upon meAh you are here now!
Give me now libidinous joys only!
Give me the drench of my passions! Give me life coarse and rank!
To-day, I go consort with natures darlingsto-night too;
City of Ships.
© Walt Whitman
CITY of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bowd steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here;
Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun.
© Walt Whitman
1
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the unmowd grass grows;
Think of the Soul.
© Walt Whitman
THINK of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other
spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
Hushd be the Camps To-day.
© Walt Whitman
1
HUSHD be the camps to-day;
And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons;
And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate,
Assurances.
© Walt Whitman
I NEED no assurancesI am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul;
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of,
are
now looking faces I am not cognizant ofcalm and actual faces;
Indications, The.
© Walt Whitman
THE indications, and tally of time;
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs;
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts;
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their
One Hour to Madness and Joy.
© Walt Whitman
ONE hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love.
© Walt Whitman
PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love,
O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born,
The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascendI float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.
Great are the Myths.
© Walt Whitman
1
GREAT are the mythsI too delight in them;
Great are Adam and EveI too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
