American
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist from Long Island, New York, widely regarded as the father of free verse and one of the most influential poets in American literature.
His single, ever-expanding book ‘Leaves of Grass’, first published in 1855 and revised throughout his life into the 1892 ‘deathbed’ edition used here, celebrated democracy, the body, and the American landscape in a sweeping, unrhymed line.
Poems (384)
- One’s-Self I Sing
- As I Ponder’d in Silence
- In Cabin’d Ships at Sea
- To Foreign Lands
- To a Historian
- To Thee Old Cause
- Eidolons
- For Him I Sing
- When I Read the Book
- Beginning My Studies
- Beginners
- To the States
- On Journeys Through the States
- To a Certain Cantatrice
- Me Imperturbe
- Savantism
- The Ship Starting
- I Hear America Singing
- What Place Is Besieged?
- Still Though the One I Sing
- Shut Not Your Doors
- Poets to Come
- To You
- Thou Reader
- Starting from Paumanok
- Song of Myself
- To the Garden the World
- From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
- I Sing the Body Electric
- A Woman Waits for Me
- Spontaneous Me
- One Hour to Madness and Joy
- Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
- Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
- We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
- O Hymen! O Hymenee!
- I Am He That Aches with Love
- Native Moments
- Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City
- I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
- Facing West from California’s Shores
- As Adam Early in the Morning
- In Paths Untrodden
- Scented Herbage of My Breast
- Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
- For You, O Democracy
- These I Singing in Spring
- Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only
- Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
- The Base of All Metaphysics
- Recorders Ages Hence
- When I Heard at the Close of the Day
- Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
- Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
- Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
- Trickle Drops
- City of Orgies
- Behold This Swarthy Face
- I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
- To a Stranger
- This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
- I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
- The Prairie-Grass Dividing
- When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame
- We Two Boys Together Clinging
- A Promise to California
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
- No Labor-Saving Machine
- A Glimpse
- A Leaf for Hand in Hand
- Earth, My Likeness
- I Dream’d in a Dream
- What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
- To the East and to the West
- Sometimes with One I Love
- To a Western Boy
- Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!
- Among the Multitude
- O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
- That Shadow My Likeness
- Full of Life Now
- Salut au Monde!
- Song of the Open Road
- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
- Song of the Answerer
- Our Old Feuillage
- A Song of Joys
- Song of the Broad-Axe
- Song of the Exposition
- Song of the Redwood-Tree
- A Song for Occupations
- A Song of the Rolling Earth
- Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
- Song of the Universal
- Pioneers! O Pioneers!
- To You
- France [the 18th Year of these States
- Myself and Mine
- Year of Meteors [1859-60
- With Antecedents
- A Broadway Pageant
- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
- As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
- Tears
- To the Man-of-War-Bird
- Aboard at a Ship’s Helm
- On the Beach at Night
- The World below the Brine
- On the Beach at Night Alone
- Song for All Seas, All Ships
- Patroling Barnegat
- After the Sea-Ship
- A Boston Ballad [1854]
- Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
- A Hand-Mirror
- Gods
- Germs
- Thoughts
- When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
- Perfections
- O Me! O Life!
- To a President
- I Sit and Look Out
- To Rich Givers
- The Dalliance of the Eagles
- Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]
- A Farm Picture
- A Child’s Amaze
- The Runner
- Beautiful Women
- Mother and Babe
- Thought
- Visor’d
- Thought
- Gliding O’er all
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
- Thought
- To Old Age
- Locations and Times
- Offerings
- To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]
- First O Songs for a Prelude
- Eighteen Sixty-One
- Beat! Beat! Drums!
- From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
- Song of the Banner at Daybreak
- Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
- Virginia--The West
- City of Ships
- The Centenarian’s Story
- Cavalry Crossing a Ford
- Bivouac on a Mountain Side
- An Army Corps on the March
- By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
- Come Up from the Fields Father
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
- A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
- A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
- As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods
- Not the Pilot
- Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
- The Wound-Dresser
- Long, Too Long America
- Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
- Dirge for Two Veterans
- Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
- I Saw Old General at Bay
- The Artilleryman’s Vision
- Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
- Not Youth Pertains to Me
- Race of Veterans
- World Take Good Notice
- O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
- Look Down Fair Moon
- Reconciliation
- How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]
- As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
- Delicate Cluster
- To a Certain Civilian
- Lo, Victress on the Peaks
- Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]
- Adieu to a Soldier
- Turn O Libertad
- To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod
- When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
- O Captain! My Captain!
- Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
- This Dust Was Once the Man
- By Blue Ontario’s Shore
- Reversals
- As Consequent, Etc.
- The Return of the Heroes
- There Was a Child Went Forth
- Old Ireland
- The City Dead-House
- This Compost
- To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire
- Unnamed Land
- Song of Prudence
- The Singer in the Prison
- Warble for Lilac-Time
- Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]
- Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
- Vocalism
- To Him That Was Crucified
- You Felons on Trial in Courts
- Laws for Creations
- To a Common Prostitute
- I Was Looking a Long While
- Thought
- Miracles
- Sparkles from the Wheel
- To a Pupil
- Unfolded out of the Folds
- What Am I After All
- Kosmos
- Others May Praise What They Like
- Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
- Tests
- The Torch
- O Star of France [1870-71]
- The Ox-Tamer
- Wandering at Morn
- With All Thy Gifts
- My Picture-Gallery
- The Prairie States
- Proud Music of the Storm
- Passage to India
- Prayer of Columbus
- The Sleepers
- Transpositions
- To Think of Time
- Darest Thou Now O Soul
- Whispers of Heavenly Death
- Chanting the Square Deific
- Of Him I Love Day and Night
- Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
- As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
- Assurances
- Quicksand Years
- That Music Always Round Me
- What Ship Puzzled at Sea
- A Noiseless Patient Spider
- O Living Always, Always Dying
- To One Shortly to Die
- Night on the Prairies
- Thought
- The Last Invocation
- As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
- Pensive and Faltering
- Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
- A Paumanok Picture
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling
- Faces
- The Mystic Trumpeter
- To a Locomotive in Winter
- O Magnet-South
- Mannahatta
- All Is Truth
- A Riddle Song
- Excelsior
- Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
- Thoughts
- Mediums
- Weave in, My Hardy Life
- Spain, 1873-74
- By Broad Potomac’s Shore
- From Far Dakota’s Canyons [June 25, 1876]
- Old War-Dreams
- Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
- As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
- A Clear Midnight
- As the Time Draws Nigh
- Years of the Modern
- Ashes of Soldiers
- Thoughts
- Song at Sunset
- As at Thy Portals Also Death
- My Legacy
- Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
- Camps of Green
- The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]
- As They Draw to a Close
- Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
- The Untold Want
- Portals
- These Carols
- Now Finale to the Shore
- So Long!
- Mannahatta
- Paumanok
- From Montauk Point
- To Those Who’ve Fail’d
- A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
- The Bravest Soldiers
- A Font of Type
- As I Sit Writing Here
- My Canary Bird
- Queries to My Seventieth Year
- The Wallabout Martyrs
- The First Dandelion
- America
- Memories
- To-Day and Thee
- After the Dazzle of Day
- Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
- Out of May’s Shows Selected
- Halcyon Days
- FANCIES AT NAVESINK
- Election Day, November, 1884
- With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
- Death of General Grant
- Red Jacket (From Aloft)
- Washington’s Monument February, 1885
- Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
- Broadway
- To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
- Old Salt Kossabone
- The Dead Tenor
- Continuities
- Yonnondio
- Life
- “Going Somewhere”
- Small the Theme of My Chant
- True Conquerors
- The United States to Old World Critics
- The Calming Thought of All
- Thanks in Old Age
- Life and Death
- The Voice of the Rain
- Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here
- While Not the Past Forgetting
- The Dying Veteran
- Stronger Lessons
- A Prairie Sunset
- Twenty Years
- Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
- Twilight
- You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
- Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
- The Dead Emperor
- As the Greek’s Signal Flame
- The Dismantled Ship
- Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
- An Evening Lull
- Old Age’s Lambent Peaks
- After the Supper and Talk
- Sail out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!
- Lingering Last Drops
- Good-Bye My Fancy
- On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
- MY 71st Year
- Apparitions
- The Pallid Wreath
- An Ended Day
- Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s
- To the Pending Year
- Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher
- Long, Long Hence
- Bravo, Paris Exposition!
- Interpolation Sounds
- To the Sun-Set Breeze
- Old Chants
- A Christmas Greeting
- Sounds of the Winter
- A Twilight Song
- When the Full-Grown Poet Came
- Osceola
- A Voice from Death
- A Persian Lesson
- The Commonplace
- “The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”
- Mirages
- L. of G.’s Purport
- The Unexpress’d
- Grand Is the Seen
- Unseen Buds
- Good-Bye My Fancy!
- Come, Said My Soul
- An Old Man’s Thought of School
- Italian Music in Dakota
- What Best I See in Thee
- Spirit That Form’d This Scene
- After an Interval