LEAVES OF GRASS

By Walt Whitman

Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
Walt Whitman

Contents

[ BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS]
[ 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]
[ BOOK II.]
[ BOOK III.]
[ BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM]
[ 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]
[ BOOK V. CALAMUS]
[ 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]
[ BOOK VI.]
[ BOOK VII.]
[ BOOK VIII.]
[ BOOK IX.]
[ BOOK X.]
[ BOOK XI.]
[ BOOK XII.]
[ BOOK XIII.]
[ BOOK XIV.]
[ BOOK XV.]
[ BOOK XVI.]
[ Youth, Day, Old Age and Night]
[ BOOK XVII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE]
[ Pioneers! O Pioneers!]
[ To You]
[ France [the 18th Year of these States]
[ Myself and Mine]
[ Year of Meteors [1859-60]
[ With Antecedents]
[ BOOK XVIII]
[ BOOK XIX. SEA-DRIFT]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XX. BY THE ROADSIDE]
[ Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
[ A Hand-Mirror]
[ Gods]
[ Germs]
[ Thoughts]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN ]
[ O Captain! My Captain!]
[ Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865]
[ This Dust Was Once the Man]
[ BOOK XXIII.]
[ Reversals]
[ BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XXV.]
[ BOOK XXVI.]
[ BOOK XXVII.]
[ BOOK XXVIII.]
[ Transpositions]
[ BOOK XXIX.]
[ BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH ]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XXXI.]
[ A Paumanok Picture]
[ BOOK XXXII. FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT ]
[ 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]
[ BOOK XXXIII. SONGS OF PARTING]
[ 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!]
[ BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY]
[ 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]
[ 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]
[ BOOKXXXV. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY]
[ 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!]

BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS

One’s-Self I Sing

One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say
the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

As I Ponder’d in Silence