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The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman

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Walt Whitman
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: May 31
Died: 1892
Died: March 26
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Nurse
Poet
Writer
West Hills
New York
Walter Whitman
Goes
Recurring
Powerful
Amid
Society
Verse
May
Verses
Play
Contribute
Good
Exists
Life
Identity
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You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...
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I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
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Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.
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The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.
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There is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth - but all is truth without exception And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing.
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I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
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The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves.
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I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.
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A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
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Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems
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The beautiful uncut hair of graves.
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The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer, I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
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And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
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Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes its liberty.
Walt Whitman
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A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman
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Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.
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The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him - it cannot fail
Walt Whitman
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The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
Walt Whitman
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O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!
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The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures
Walt Whitman