letters/poetry/whitman_leaves_of_grass.json

[
  {
    "title": "By Walt Whitman",
    "body": "     Come, said my soul,\n     Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)\n     That should I after return,\n     Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,\n     There to some group of mates the chants resuming,\n     (Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)\n     Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,\n     Ever and ever yet the verses owning--as, first, I here and now\n     Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,\n\n     Walt Whitman",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "One’s-Self I Sing",
    "body": "  One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,\n  Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.\n\n  Of physiology from top to toe I sing,\n  Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say\n      the Form complete is worthier far,\n  The Female equally with the Male I sing.\n\n  Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,\n  Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,\n  The Modern Man I sing.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Ponder’d in Silence",
    "body": "  As I ponder’d in silence,\n  Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,\n  A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,\n  Terrible in beauty, age, and power,\n  The genius of poets of old lands,\n  As to me directing like flame its eyes,\n  With finger pointing to many immortal songs,\n  And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,\n  Know’st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?\n  And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,\n  The making of perfect soldiers.\n\n  Be it so, then I answer’d,\n  I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,\n  Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance\n      and retreat, victory deferr’d and wavering,\n  (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the\n      field the world,\n  For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,\n  Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,\n  I above all promote brave soldiers.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "In Cabin’d Ships at Sea",
    "body": "  In cabin’d ships at sea,\n  The boundless blue on every side expanding,\n  With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,\n  Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine,\n  Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,\n  She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under\n      many a star at night,\n  By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,\n  In full rapport at last.\n\n  Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts,\n  Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,\n  The sky o’erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,\n  We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,\n  The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the\n      briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,\n  The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,\n  The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,\n  And this is ocean’s poem.\n\n  Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,\n  You not a reminiscence of the land alone,\n  You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos’d I know not\n      whither, yet ever full of faith,\n  Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!\n  Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it\n      here in every leaf;)\n  Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the\n      imperious waves,\n  Chant on, sail on, bear o’er the boundless blue from me to every sea,\n  This song for mariners and all their ships.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Foreign Lands",
    "body": "  I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle the New World,\n  And to define America, her athletic Democracy,\n  Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Historian",
    "body": "  You who celebrate bygones,\n  Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life\n      that has exhibited itself,\n  Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,\n      rulers and priests,\n  I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself\n      in his own rights,\n  Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,\n      (the great pride of man in himself,)\n  Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,\n  I project the history of the future.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Thee Old Cause",
    "body": "  To thee old cause!\n  Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,\n  Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,\n  Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,\n  After a strange sad war, great war for thee,\n  (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be\n      really fought, for thee,)\n  These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.\n\n  (A war O soldiers not for itself alone,\n  Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)\n\n  Thou orb of many orbs!\n  Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!\n  Around the idea of thee the war revolving,\n  With all its angry and vehement play of causes,\n  (With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,)\n  These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one,\n  Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,\n  As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,\n  Around the idea of thee.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eidolons",
    "body": "       I met a seer,\n  Passing the hues and objects of the world,\n  The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,\n       To glean eidolons.\n\n       Put in thy chants said he,\n  No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,\n  Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,\n       That of eidolons.\n\n       Ever the dim beginning,\n  Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,\n  Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)\n       Eidolons! eidolons!\n\n       Ever the mutable,\n  Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,\n  Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,\n       Issuing eidolons.\n\n       Lo, I or you,\n  Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,\n  We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,\n       But really build eidolons.\n\n       The ostent evanescent,\n  The substance of an artist’s mood or savan’s studies long,\n  Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils,\n       To fashion his eidolon.\n\n       Of every human life,\n  (The units gather’d, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)\n  The whole or large or small summ’d, added up,\n       In its eidolon.\n\n       The old, old urge,\n  Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,\n  From science and the modern still impell’d,\n       The old, old urge, eidolons.\n\n       The present now and here,\n  America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl,\n  Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,\n       To-day’s eidolons.\n\n       These with the past,\n  Of vanish’d lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,\n  Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages,\n       Joining eidolons.\n\n       Densities, growth, facades,\n  Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,\n  Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,\n       Eidolons everlasting.\n\n       Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,\n  The visible but their womb of birth,\n  Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,\n       The mighty earth-eidolon.\n\n       All space, all time,\n  (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,\n  Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)\n       Fill’d with eidolons only.\n\n       The noiseless myriads,\n  The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,\n  The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,\n       The true realities, eidolons.\n\n       Not this the world,\n  Nor these the universes, they the universes,\n  Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,\n       Eidolons, eidolons.\n\n       Beyond thy lectures learn’d professor,\n  Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,\n  Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,\n       The entities of entities, eidolons.\n\n       Unfix’d yet fix’d,\n  Ever shall be, ever have been and are,\n  Sweeping the present to the infinite future,\n       Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.\n\n       The prophet and the bard,\n  Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,\n  Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,\n       God and eidolons.\n\n       And thee my soul,\n  Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,\n  Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,\n       Thy mates, eidolons.\n\n       Thy body permanent,\n  The body lurking there within thy body,\n  The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,\n       An image, an eidolon.\n\n       Thy very songs not in thy songs,\n  No special strains to sing, none for itself,\n  But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,\n       A round full-orb’d eidolon.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "For Him I Sing",
    "body": "  For him I sing,\n  I raise the present on the past,\n  (As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)\n  With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,\n  To make himself by them the law unto himself.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When I Read the Book",
    "body": "  When I read the book, the biography famous,\n  And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?\n  And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?\n  (As if any man really knew aught of my life,\n  Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,\n  Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections\n  I seek for my own use to trace out here.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beginning My Studies",
    "body": "  Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,\n  The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,\n  The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,\n  The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,\n  I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,\n  But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beginners",
    "body": "  How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)\n  How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,\n  How they inure to themselves as much as to any--what a paradox\n      appears their age,\n  How people respond to them, yet know them not,\n  How there is something relentless in their fate all times,\n  How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,\n  And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same\n      great purchase.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the States",
    "body": "  To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist\n      much, obey little,\n  Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,\n  Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever\n      afterward resumes its liberty.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "On Journeys Through the States",
    "body": "  On journeys through the States we start,\n  (Ay through the world, urged by these songs,\n  Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)\n  We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.\n\n  We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,\n  And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the\n      seasons, and effuse as much?\n\n  We dwell a while in every city and town,\n  We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the\n      Mississippi, and the Southern States,\n  We confer on equal terms with each of the States,\n  We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,\n  We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the\n      body and the soul,\n  Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,\n  And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,\n  And may be just as much as the seasons.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Certain Cantatrice",
    "body": "  Here, take this gift,\n  I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,\n  One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the\n      progress and freedom of the race,\n  Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;\n  But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Me Imperturbe",
    "body": "  Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,\n  Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,\n  Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,\n  Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less\n      important than I thought,\n  Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee,\n      or far north or inland,\n  A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these\n      States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,\n  Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,\n  To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as\n      the trees and animals do.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Savantism",
    "body": "  Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and\n      nestling close, always obligated,\n  Thither hours, months, years--thither trades, compacts,\n      establishments, even the most minute,\n  Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;\n  Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,\n  As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Ship Starting",
    "body": "  Lo, the unbounded sea,\n  On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even\n      her moonsails.\n  The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately--\n      below emulous waves press forward,\n  They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Hear America Singing",
    "body": "  I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,\n  Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,\n  The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,\n  The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,\n  The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand\n      singing on the steamboat deck,\n  The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as\n      he stands,\n  The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning,\n      or at noon intermission or at sundown,\n  The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,\n      or of the girl sewing or washing,\n  Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,\n  The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young\n      fellows, robust, friendly,\n  Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "What Place Is Besieged?",
    "body": "  What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?\n  Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,\n  And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,\n  And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Still Though the One I Sing",
    "body": "  Still though the one I sing,\n  (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,\n  I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O\n      quenchless, indispensable fire!)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Shut Not Your Doors",
    "body": "  Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,\n  For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet\n      needed most, I bring,\n  Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,\n  The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,\n  A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the intellect,\n  But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Poets to Come",
    "body": "  Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!\n  Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,\n  But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than\n      before known,\n  Arouse! for you must justify me.\n\n  I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,\n  I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.\n\n  I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a\n      casual look upon you and then averts his face,\n  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,\n  Expecting the main things from you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To You",
    "body": "  Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why\n      should you not speak to me?\n  And why should I not speak to you?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thou Reader",
    "body": "  Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,\n  Therefore for thee the following chants.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Starting from Paumanok",
    "body": "       1\n  Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,\n  Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,\n  After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,\n  Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,\n  Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner\n      in California,\n  Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from\n      the spring,\n  Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,\n  Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,\n  Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of\n      mighty Niagara,\n  Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and\n      strong-breasted bull,\n  Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,\n      my amaze,\n  Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the\n      mountain-hawk,\n  And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the\n      swamp-cedars,\n  Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.\n\n       2\n  Victory, union, faith, identity, time,\n  The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,\n  Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.\n  This then is life,\n  Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.\n\n  How curious! how real!\n  Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.\n\n  See revolving the globe,\n  The ancestor-continents away group’d together,\n  The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus\n      between.\n\n  See, vast trackless spaces,\n  As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,\n  Countless masses debouch upon them,\n  They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.\n\n  See, projected through time,\n  For me an audience interminable.\n\n  With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,\n  Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,\n  One generation playing its part and passing on,\n  Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,\n  With faces turn’d sideways or backward towards me to listen,\n  With eyes retrospective towards me.\n\n       3\n  Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!\n  Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!\n  For you a programme of chants.\n\n  Chants of the prairies,\n  Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea,\n  Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,\n  Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant,\n  Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.\n\n       4\n  Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,\n  Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring,\n  Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,\n  And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect\n      lovingly with you.\n\n  I conn’d old times,\n  I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,\n  Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.\n\n  In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?\n  Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.\n\n       5\n  Dead poets, philosophs, priests,\n  Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,\n  Language-shapers on other shores,\n  Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,\n  I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left\n      wafted hither,\n  I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,)\n  Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more\n      than it deserves,\n  Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,\n  I stand in my place with my own day here.\n\n  Here lands female and male,\n  Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of\n      materials,\n  Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,\n  The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,\n  The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,\n  Yes here comes my mistress the soul.\n\n       6\
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of Myself",
    "body": "       1\n  I celebrate myself, and sing myself,\n  And what I assume you shall assume,\n  For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.\n\n  I loafe and invite my soul,\n  I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.\n\n  My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,\n  Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their\n      parents the same,\n  I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,\n  Hoping to cease not till death.\n\n  Creeds and schools in abeyance,\n  Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,\n  I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,\n  Nature without check with original energy.\n\n       2\n  Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with\n      perfumes,\n  I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,\n  The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.\n\n  The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the\n      distillation, it is odorless,\n  It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,\n  I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,\n  I am mad for it to be in contact with me.\n\n  The smoke of my own breath,\n  Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,\n  My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing\n      of blood and air through my lungs,\n  The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and\n      dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,\n\n  The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of\n      the wind,\n  A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,\n  The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,\n  The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields\n      and hill-sides,\n  The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising\n      from bed and meeting the sun.\n\n  Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?\n  Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?\n  Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?\n\n  Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of\n      all poems,\n  You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions\n      of suns left,)\n  You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through\n      the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,\n  You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,\n  You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.\n\n       3\n  I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the\n      beginning and the end,\n  But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.\n\n  There was never any more inception than there is now,\n  Nor any more youth or age than there is now,\n  And will never be any more perfection than there is now,\n  Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.\n\n  Urge and urge and urge,\n  Always the procreant urge of the world.\n\n  Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and\n      increase, always sex,\n  Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.\n  To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.\n\n  Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well\n      entretied, braced in the beams,\n  Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,\n  I and this mystery here we stand.\n\n  Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.\n\n  Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,\n  Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.\n\n  Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,\n  Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they\n      discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.\n\n  Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,\n  Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and no
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the Garden the World",
    "body": "  To the garden the world anew ascending,\n  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,\n  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,\n  Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,\n  The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,\n  Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,\n  My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for\n      reasons, most wondrous,\n  Existing I peer and penetrate still,\n  Content with the present, content with the past,\n  By my side or back of me Eve following,\n  Or in front, and I following her just the same.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Pent-Up Aching Rivers",
    "body": "  From pent-up aching rivers,\n  From that of myself without which I were nothing,\n  From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole\n      among men,\n  From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,\n  Singing the song of procreation,\n  Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people,\n  Singing the muscular urge and the blending,\n  Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!\n  O for any and each the body correlative attracting!\n  O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than all\n      else, you delighting!)\n  From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,\n  From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,\n  Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it\n      many a long year,\n  Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,\n  Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,\n  Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,\n  Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,\n  Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,\n  Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,\n  The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,\n  The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,\n  The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back\n      lying and floating,\n  The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous aching,\n  The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,\n  The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it arouses,\n  The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,\n  (Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,\n  I love you, O you entirely possess me,\n  O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless,\n  Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more\n      lawless than we;)\n  The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling.\n  The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that\n      loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,\n  (O I willingly stake all for you,\n  O let me be lost if it must be so!\n  O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?\n  What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust\n      each other if it must be so;)\n  From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,\n  The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking,\n  From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it is,)\n  From sex, from the warp and from the woof,\n  From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,\n  From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,\n  From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers\n      through my hair and beard,\n  From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,\n  From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting\n      with excess,\n  From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood,\n  From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in\n      the night,\n  From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,\n  From the cling of the trembling arm,\n  From the bending curve and the clinch,\n  From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,\n  From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling\n      to leave,\n  (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)\n  From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,\n  From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,\n  Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,\n  And you stalwart loins.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Sing the Body Electric",
    "body": "       1\n  I sing the body electric,\n  The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,\n  They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,\n  And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.\n\n  Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?\n  And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?\n  And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?\n  And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?\n\n       2\n  The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself\n      balks account,\n  That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.\n\n  The expression of the face balks account,\n  But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,\n  It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of\n      his hips and wrists,\n  It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist\n      and knees, dress does not hide him,\n  The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,\n  To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,\n  You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.\n\n  The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the\n      folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the\n      contour of their shape downwards,\n  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through\n      the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls\n      silently to and from the heave of the water,\n  The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the\n      horse-man in his saddle,\n  Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,\n  The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open\n      dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,\n  The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or\n      cow-yard,\n  The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six\n      horses through the crowd,\n  The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,\n      good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,\n  The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,\n  The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;\n  The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine\n      muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,\n  The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes\n      suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,\n  The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d\n      neck and the counting;\n  Such-like I love--I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s\n      breast with the little child,\n  Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with\n      the firemen, and pause, listen, count.\n\n       3\n  I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,\n  And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.\n\n  This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,\n  The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and\n      beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness\n      and breadth of his manners,\n  These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,\n  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were\n      massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,\n  They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,\n  They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,\n  He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the\n      clear-brown skin of his face,\n  He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he\n      had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had\n      fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,\n  When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,\n      you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigor
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Woman Waits for Me",
    "body": "  A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,\n  Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the\n      right man were lacking.\n\n  Sex contains all, bodies, souls,\n  Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,\n  Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,\n  All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,\n      beauties, delights of the earth,\n  All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,\n  These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.\n\n  Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,\n  Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.\n\n  Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,\n  I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that\n      are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,\n  I see that they understand me and do not deny me,\n  I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of\n      those women.\n\n  They are not one jot less than I am,\n  They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,\n  Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,\n  They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,\n      retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,\n  They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear,\n      well-possess’d of themselves.\n\n  I draw you close to me, you women,\n  I cannot let you go, I would do you good,\n  I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for\n      others’ sakes,\n  Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,\n  They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.\n\n  It is I, you women, I make my way,\n  I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,\n  I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,\n  I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I\n      press with slow rude muscle,\n  I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,\n  I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.\n\n  Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,\n  In you I wrap a thousand onward years,\n  On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,\n  The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,\n      new artists, musicians, and singers,\n  The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,\n  I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,\n  I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you\n      inter-penetrate now,\n  I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I\n      count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,\n  I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,\n      immortality, I plant so lovingly now.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spontaneous Me",
    "body": "  Spontaneous me, Nature,\n  The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,\n  The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,\n  The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,\n  The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and\n      light and dark green,\n  The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private\n      untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,\n  Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after\n      another as I happen to call them to me or think of them,\n  The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)\n  The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,\n  This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all\n      men carry,\n  (Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like me, are\n      our lusty lurking masculine poems,)\n  Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers,\n      and the climbing sap,\n  Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts\n      of love, bellies press’d and glued together with love,\n  Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,\n  The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body of the\n      man, the body of the earth,\n  Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,\n  The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that gripes the\n      full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes\n      his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight till he is\n      satisfied;\n  The wet of woods through the early hours,\n  Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with\n      an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other,\n  The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,\n  The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what\n      he was dreaming,\n  The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and\n      content to the ground,\n  The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,\n  The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any\n      one,\n  The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only privileged\n      feelers may be intimate where they are,\n  The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful\n      withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and\n      edge themselves,\n  The limpid liquid within the young man,\n  The vex’d corrosion so pensive and so painful,\n  The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,\n  The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,\n  The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that\n      flushes and flushes,\n  The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to\n      repress what would master him,\n  The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,\n  The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers,\n      the young man all color’d, red, ashamed, angry;\n  The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,\n  The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in the\n      sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,\n  The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen’d\n      long-round walnuts,\n  The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,\n  The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent,\n      while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent,\n  The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,\n  The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh daughters,\n  The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate\n      what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through,\n  The wholesome relief, repose, content,\n  And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself,\n  It has done its work--I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "One Hour to Madness and Joy",
    "body": "  One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!\n  (What is this that frees me so in storms?\n  What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)\n  O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!\n  O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,\n  I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)\n\n  O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me\n      in defiance of the world!\n  O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!\n  O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of\n      a determin’d man.\n\n  O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all\n      untied and illumin’d!\n  O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!\n  To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and\n      you from yours!\n  To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!\n  To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!\n  To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.\n\n  O something unprov’d! something in a trance!\n  To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!\n  To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!\n  To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!\n  To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!\n  To rise thither with my inebriate soul!\n  To be lost if it must be so!\n  To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!\n  With one brief hour of madness and joy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd",
    "body": "  Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,\n  Whispering I love you, before long I die,\n  I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,\n  For I could not die till I once look’d on you,\n  For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.\n\n  Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,\n  Return in peace to the ocean my love,\n  I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,\n  Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!\n  But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,\n  As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;\n  Be not impatient--a little space--know you I salute the air, the\n      ocean and the land,\n  Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals",
    "body": "  Ages and ages returning at intervals,\n  Undestroy’d, wandering immortal,\n  Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,\n  I, chanter of Adamic songs,\n  Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,\n  Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering myself,\n  Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,\n  Offspring of my loins.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d",
    "body": "  We two, how long we were fool’d,\n  Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,\n  We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,\n  We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,\n  We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,\n  We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,\n  We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,\n  We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,\n  We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings\n      and evenings,\n  We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,\n  We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,\n  We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic\n      and stellar, we are as two comets,\n  We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,\n  We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,\n  We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling\n      over each other and interwetting each other,\n  We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,\n  We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence\n      of the globe,\n  We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,\n  We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Hymen! O Hymenee!",
    "body": "  O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?\n  O why sting me for a swift moment only?\n  Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?\n  Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would\n      soon certainly kill me?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Am He That Aches with Love",
    "body": "  I am he that aches with amorous love;\n  Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?\n  So the body of me to all I meet or know.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Native Moments",
    "body": "  Native moments--when you come upon me--ah you are here now,\n  Give me now libidinous joys only,\n  Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,\n  To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,\n  I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight\n      orgies of young men,\n  I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,\n  The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low person\n      for my dearest friend,\n  He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by\n      others for deeds done,\n  I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?\n  O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,\n  I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,\n  I will be more to you than to any of the rest.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City",
    "body": "  Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future\n      use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,\n  Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met\n      there who detain’d me for love of me,\n  Day by day and night by night we were together--all else has long\n      been forgotten by me,\n  I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,\n  Again we wander, we love, we separate again,\n  Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,\n  I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ",
    "body": "  I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I\n      pass’d the church,\n  Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-\n      stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,\n  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the\n      soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;\n  Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the\n      wrists around my head,\n  Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last\n      night under my ear.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Facing West from California’s Shores",
    "body": "  Facing west from California’s shores,\n  Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,\n  I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,\n      the land of migrations, look afar,\n  Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;\n  For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,\n  From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,\n  From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,\n  Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,\n  Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,\n  (But where is what I started for so long ago?\n  And why is it yet unfound?)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As Adam Early in the Morning",
    "body": "  As Adam early in the morning,\n  Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,\n  Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,\n  Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,\n  Be not afraid of my body.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "In Paths Untrodden",
    "body": "  In paths untrodden,\n  In the growth by margins of pond-waters,\n  Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,\n  From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the pleasures,\n      profits, conformities,\n  Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,\n  Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d, clear to me that my soul,\n  That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,\n  Here by myself away from the clank of the world,\n  Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,\n  No longer abash’d, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I\n      would not dare elsewhere,)\n  Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains\n      all the rest,\n  Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,\n  Projecting them along that substantial life,\n  Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,\n  Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,\n  I proceed for all who are or have been young men,\n  To tell the secret my nights and days,\n  To celebrate the need of comrades.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Scented Herbage of My Breast",
    "body": "  Scented herbage of my breast,\n  Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards,\n  Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,\n  Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you\n      delicate leaves,\n  Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you\n      shall emerge again;\n  O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or inhale\n      your faint odor, but I believe a few will;\n  O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell in\n      your own way of the heart that is under you,\n  O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves, you are\n      not happiness,\n  You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting me,\n  Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make me\n      think of death,\n  Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful\n      except death and love?)\n  O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers,\n      I think it must be for death,\n  For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,\n  Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,\n  (I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)\n  Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as\n      you mean,\n  Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my breast!\n  Spring away from the conceal’d heart there!\n  Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves!\n  Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!\n  Come I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have\n      long enough stifled and choked;\n  Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me not,\n  I will say what I have to say by itself,\n  I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a\n      call only their call,\n  I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States,\n  I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will\n      through the States,\n  Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating,\n  Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it,\n  Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above all, and\n      are folded inseparably together, you love and death are,\n  Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life,\n  For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential,\n  That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that\n      they are mainly for you,\n  That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,\n  That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long,\n  That you will one day perhaps take control of all,\n  That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,\n  That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long,\n  But you will last very long.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand",
    "body": "  Whoever you are holding me now in hand,\n  Without one thing all will be useless,\n  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,\n  I am not what you supposed, but far different.\n\n  Who is he that would become my follower?\n  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?\n\n  The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,\n  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your\n      sole and exclusive standard,\n  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,\n  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives\n      around you would have to be abandon’d,\n  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let\n      go your hand from my shoulders,\n  Put me down and depart on your way.\n\n  Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,\n  Or back of a rock in the open air,\n  (For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,\n  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)\n  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any\n      person for miles around approach unawares,\n  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or\n      some quiet island,\n  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,\n  With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,\n  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.\n\n  Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,\n  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,\n  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;\n  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,\n  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.\n\n  But these leaves conning you con at peril,\n  For these leaves and me you will not understand,\n  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will\n      certainly elude you.\n  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!\n  Already you see I have escaped from you.\n\n  For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,\n  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,\n  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,\n  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)\n      prove victorious,\n  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,\n      perhaps more,\n  For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times\n      and not hit, that which I hinted at;\n  Therefore release me and depart on your way.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "For You, O Democracy",
    "body": "  Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,\n  I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,\n  I will make divine magnetic lands,\n       With the love of comrades,\n         With the life-long love of comrades.\n\n  I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,\n      and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,\n  I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,\n       By the love of comrades,\n         By the manly love of comrades.\n\n  For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!\n  For you, for you I am trilling these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "These I Singing in Spring",
    "body": "  These I singing in spring collect for lovers,\n  (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?\n  And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)\n  Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,\n  Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,\n  Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there,\n      pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,\n  (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and\n      partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)\n  Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I\n      think where I go,\n  Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,\n  Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,\n  Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,\n  They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a\n      great crowd, and I in the middle,\n  Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,\n  Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,\n  Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,\n  Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in\n      Florida as it hung trailing down,\n  Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,\n  And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,\n  (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again\n      never to separate from me,\n  And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this\n      calamus-root shall,\n  Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)\n  And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,\n  And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,\n  These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,\n  Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,\n  Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each;\n  But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,\n  I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable\n      of loving.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only",
    "body": "  Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,\n  Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,\n  Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,\n  Not in many an oath and promise broken,\n  Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,\n  Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,\n  Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,\n  Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease,\n  Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,\n  Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in\n      the wilds,\n  Not in husky pantings through clinch’d teeth,\n  Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,\n  Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,\n  Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,\n  Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you\n      continually--not there,\n  Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!\n  Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances",
    "body": "  Of the terrible doubt of appearances,\n  Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,\n  That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,\n  That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,\n  May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,\n      shining and flowing waters,\n  The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these\n      are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real\n      something has yet to be known,\n  (How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!\n  How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)\n  May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem)\n      as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they\n      would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely\n      changed points of view;\n  To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d by my\n      lovers, my dear friends,\n  When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me\n      by the hand,\n  When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason\n      hold not, surround us and pervade us,\n  Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I\n      require nothing further,\n  I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity\n      beyond the grave,\n  But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,\n  He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Base of All Metaphysics",
    "body": "  And now gentlemen,\n  A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,\n  As base and finale too for all metaphysics.\n\n  (So to the students the old professor,\n  At the close of his crowded course.)\n\n  Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,\n  Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,\n  Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,\n  And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having\n      studied long,\n  I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,\n  See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,\n  Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,\n  The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,\n  Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,\n  Of city for city and land for land.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Recorders Ages Hence",
    "body": "  Recorders ages hence,\n  Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I\n      will tell you what to say of me,\n  Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,\n  The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,\n  Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love\n      within him, and freely pour’d it forth,\n  Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,\n  Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and\n      dissatisfied at night,\n  Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might\n      secretly be indifferent to him,\n  Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills,\n      he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,\n  Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder\n      of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When I Heard at the Close of the Day",
    "body": "  When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d\n      with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for\n      me that follow’d,\n  And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still\n      I was not happy,\n  But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,\n      refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,\n  When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the\n      morning light,\n  When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,\n      laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,\n  And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way\n      coming, O then I was happy,\n  O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food\n      nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,\n  And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came\n      my friend,\n  And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly\n      continually up the shores,\n  I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me\n      whispering to congratulate me,\n  For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in\n      the cool night,\n  In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,\n  And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?",
    "body": "  Are you the new person drawn toward me?\n  To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;\n  Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?\n  Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?\n  Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?\n  Do you think I am trusty and faithful?\n  Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant\n      manner of me?\n  Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?\n  Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone",
    "body": "  Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,\n  Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side,\n  Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter\n      than vines,\n  Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the\n      sun is risen,\n  Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the living\n      sea, to you O sailors!\n  Frost-mellow’d berries and Third-month twigs offer’d fresh to young\n      persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,\n  Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,\n  Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,\n  If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bring\n      form, color, perfume, to you,\n  If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,\n      fruits, tall branches and trees.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes",
    "body": "  Not heat flames up and consumes,\n  Not sea-waves hurry in and out,\n  Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightly\n      along white down-balls of myriads of seeds,\n  Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;\n  Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consuming,\n      burning for his love whom I love,\n  O none more than I hurrying in and out;\n  Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O I the same,\n  O nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting clouds,\n      are borne through the open air,\n  Any more than my soul is borne through the open air,\n  Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Trickle Drops",
    "body": "  Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving!\n  O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,\n  Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,\n  From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d,\n  From my face, from my forehead and lips,\n  From my breast, from within where I was conceal’d, press forth red\n      drops, confession drops,\n  Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops,\n  Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten,\n  Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,\n  Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,\n  Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "City of Orgies",
    "body": "  City of orgies, walks and joys,\n  City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make\n  Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your\n      spectacles, repay me,\n  Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,\n  Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with\n      goods in them,\n  Nor to converse with learn’d persons, or bear my share in the soiree\n      or feast;\n  Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flash\n      of eyes offering me love,\n  Offering response to my own--these repay me,\n  Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Behold This Swarthy Face",
    "body": "  Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,\n  This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,\n  My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;\n  Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightly\n      on the lips with robust love,\n  And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck give a\n      kiss in return,\n  We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,\n  We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing",
    "body": "  I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,\n  All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,\n  Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green,\n  And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,\n  But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there\n      without its friend near, for I knew I could not,\n  And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it and\n      twined around it a little moss,\n  And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,\n  It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,\n  (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)\n  Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;\n  For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana\n      solitary in a wide in a wide flat space,\n  Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,\n  I know very well I could not.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Stranger",
    "body": "  Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,\n  You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me\n      as of a dream,)\n  I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,\n  All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,\n      chaste, matured,\n  You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,\n  I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours\n      only nor left my body mine only,\n  You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you\n      take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,\n  I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or\n      wake at night alone,\n  I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,\n  I am to see to it that I do not lose you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful",
    "body": "  This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone,\n  It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful,\n  It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy,\n      France, Spain,\n  Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or talking other dialects,\n  And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become\n      attached to them as I do to men in my own lands,\n  O I know we should be brethren and lovers,\n  I know I should be happy with them.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Hear It Was Charged Against Me",
    "body": "  I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,\n  But really I am neither for nor against institutions,\n  (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the\n      destruction of them?)\n  Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these\n      States inland and seaboard,\n  And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large\n      that dents the water,\n  Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,\n  The institution of the dear love of comrades.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Prairie-Grass Dividing",
    "body": "  The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,\n  I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,\n  Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,\n  Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,\n  Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,\n  Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and\n      command, leading not following,\n  Those with a never-quell’d audacity, those with sweet and lusty\n      flesh clear of taint,\n  Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors,\n      as to say Who are you?\n  Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain’d, never obedient,\n  Those of inland America.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame",
    "body": "  When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes and the victories of\n      mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,\n  Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house,\n  But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,\n  How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long\n      and long,\n  Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how\n      affectionate and faithful they were,\n  Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away fill’d with the bitterest envy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "We Two Boys Together Clinging",
    "body": "  We two boys together clinging,\n  One the other never leaving,\n  Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,\n  Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,\n  Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.\n  No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,\n      threatening,\n  Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on\n      the turf or the sea-beach dancing,\n  Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,\n  Fulfilling our foray.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Promise to California",
    "body": "  A promise to California,\n  Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon;\n  Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,\n      to teach robust American love,\n  For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,\n      inland, and along the Western sea;\n  For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I will also.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Here the Frailest Leaves of Me",
    "body": "  Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,\n  Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,\n  And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "No Labor-Saving Machine",
    "body": "  No labor-saving machine,\n  Nor discovery have I made,\n  Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found\n      hospital or library,\n  Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,\n  Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf,\n  But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,\n  For comrades and lovers.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Glimpse",
    "body": "  A glimpse through an interstice caught,\n  Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove\n      late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,\n  Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and\n      seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,\n  A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and\n      oath and smutty jest,\n  There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,\n      perhaps not a word.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Leaf for Hand in Hand",
    "body": "  A leaf for hand in hand;\n  You natural persons old and young!\n  You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of\n      the Mississippi!\n  You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!\n  You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!\n  I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to\n      walk hand in hand.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Earth, My Likeness",
    "body": "  Earth, my likeness,\n  Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,\n  I now suspect that is not all;\n  I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,\n  For an athlete is enamour’d of me, and I of him,\n  But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible\n      to burst forth,\n  I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Dream’d in a Dream",
    "body": "  I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the\n      whole of the rest of the earth,\n  I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,\n  Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,\n  It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,\n  And in all their looks and words.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?",
    "body": "  What think you I take my pen in hand to record?\n  The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the\n      offing to-day under full sail?\n  The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that\n      envelops me?\n  Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? --no;\n  But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the midst\n      of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,\n  The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately kiss’d him,\n  While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the East and to the West",
    "body": "  To the East and to the West,\n  To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,\n  To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,\n  These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,\n  I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb\n      friendship, exalte, previously unknown,\n  Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sometimes with One I Love",
    "body": "  Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse\n      unreturn’d love,\n  But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one\n      way or another,\n  (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,\n  Yet out of that I have written these songs.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Western Boy",
    "body": "  Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;\n  Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,\n  If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers,\n  Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!",
    "body": "  Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!\n  O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!\n  Then separate, as disembodied or another born,\n  Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,\n  I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,\n  O sharer of my roving life.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Among the Multitude",
    "body": "  Among the men and women the multitude,\n  I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,\n  Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,\n      any nearer than I am,\n  Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.\n\n  Ah lover and perfect equal,\n  I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,\n  And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O You Whom I Often and Silently Come",
    "body": "  O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,\n  As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,\n  Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is\n      playing within me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "That Shadow My Likeness",
    "body": "  That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,\n      chattering, chaffering,\n  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,\n  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;\n  But among my lovers and caroling these songs,\n  O I never doubt whether that is really me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Full of Life Now",
    "body": "  Full of life now, compact, visible,\n  I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,\n  To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,\n  To you yet unborn these, seeking you.\n\n  When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,\n  Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,\n  Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;\n  Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Salut au Monde!",
    "body": "       1\n  O take my hand Walt Whitman!\n  Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!\n  Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next,\n  Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.\n\n  What widens within you Walt Whitman?\n  What waves and soils exuding?\n  What climes? what persons and cities are here?\n  Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?\n  Who are the girls? who are the married women?\n  Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about\n      each other’s necks?\n  What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?\n  What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?\n  What myriads of dwellings are they fill’d with dwellers?\n\n       2\n  Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,\n  Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east--America is provided for in the west,\n  Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,\n  Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,\n  Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it\n      does not set for months,\n  Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above\n      the horizon and sinks again,\n  Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,\n  Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.\n\n       3\n  What do you hear Walt Whitman?\n\n  I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing,\n  I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early\n      in the day,\n  I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,\n  I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to\n      the rebeck and guitar,\n  I hear continual echoes from the Thames,\n  I hear fierce French liberty songs,\n  I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,\n  I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with\n      the showers of their terrible clouds,\n  I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the\n      breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,\n  I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,\n  I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,\n  I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear\n      the responsive base and soprano,\n  I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor’s voice putting to sea\n      at Okotsk,\n  I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the\n      husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten’d together\n      with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,\n  I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,\n  I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of\n      the Romans,\n  I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful\n      God the Christ,\n  I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,\n      adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three\n      thousand years ago.\n\n       4\n  What do you see Walt Whitman?\n  Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?\n  I see a great round wonder rolling through space,\n  I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,\n      palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface,\n  I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,\n      and the sunlit part on the other side,\n  I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,\n  I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as\n      my land is to me.\n\n  I see plenteous waters,\n  I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,\n  I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,\n  I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,\n  I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,\n  I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the\n      Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,\n  I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the Red\n      mountains of Madagascar,\n  I see the Lybian, Arabi
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Open Road",
    "body": "       1\n  Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,\n  Healthy, free, the world before me,\n  The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.\n\n  Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,\n  Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,\n  Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,\n  Strong and content I travel the open road.\n\n  The earth, that is sufficient,\n  I do not want the constellations any nearer,\n  I know they are very well where they are,\n  I know they suffice for those who belong to them.\n\n  (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,\n  I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,\n  I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,\n  I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)\n\n       2\n  You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all\n      that is here,\n  I believe that much unseen is also here.\n\n  Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,\n  The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the\n      illiterate person, are not denied;\n  The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the\n      drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,\n  The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,\n  The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the\n      town, the return back from the town,\n  They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,\n  None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.\n\n       3\n  You air that serves me with breath to speak!\n  You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!\n  You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!\n  You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!\n  I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.\n\n  You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!\n  You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined\n      side! you distant ships!\n  You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d facades! you roofs!\n  You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!\n  You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!\n  You doors and ascending steps! you arches!\n  You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!\n  From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to\n      yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,\n  From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces,\n      and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.\n\n       4\n  The earth expanding right hand and left hand,\n  The picture alive, every part in its best light,\n  The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is\n      not wanted,\n  The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.\n\n  O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?\n  Do you say Venture not--if you leave me you are lost?\n  Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,\n      adhere to me?\n\n  O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,\n  You express me better than I can express myself,\n  You shall be more to me than my poem.\n\n  I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all\n      free poems also,\n  I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,\n  I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever\n      beholds me shall like me,\n  I think whoever I see must be happy.\n\n       5\n  From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,\n  Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,\n  Listening to others, considering well what they say,\n  Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,\n  Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that\n      would hold me.\n\n  I inhale great draughts of space,\n  The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are min
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry",
    "body": "       1\n  Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!\n  Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also face\n      to face.\n\n  Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious\n      you are to me!\n  On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning\n      home, are more curious to me than you suppose,\n  And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more\n      to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.\n\n       2\n  The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,\n  The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every\n      one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,\n  The similitudes of the past and those of the future,\n  The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on\n      the walk in the street and the passage over the river,\n  The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,\n  The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,\n  The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.\n\n  Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,\n  Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,\n  Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the\n      heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,\n  Others will see the islands large and small;\n  Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half\n      an hour high,\n  A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others\n      will see them,\n  Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the\n      falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.\n\n       3\n  It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,\n  I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many\n      generations hence,\n  Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,\n  Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,\n  Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the\n      bright flow, I was refresh’d,\n  Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift\n      current, I stood yet was hurried,\n  Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the\n      thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.\n\n  I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,\n  Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air\n      floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,\n  Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left\n      the rest in strong shadow,\n  Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,\n  Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,\n  Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,\n  Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my\n      head in the sunlit water,\n  Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,\n  Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,\n  Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,\n  Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,\n  Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,\n  The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,\n  The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender\n      serpentine pennants,\n  The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,\n  The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,\n  The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,\n  The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the\n      frolic-some crests and glistening,\n  The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the\n      granite storehouses by the docks,\n  On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on\n      each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,\n  On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning\n      high and glaringly into the nigh
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Answerer",
    "body": "       1\n  Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the Answerer,\n  To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine before me.\n\n  A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,\n  How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother?\n  Tell him to send me the signs. And I stand before the young man\n      face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and his\n      left hand in my right hand,\n  And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for him that\n      answers for all, and send these signs.\n\n  Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final,\n  Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid light,\n  Him they immerse and he immerses them.\n\n  Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape,\n      people, animals,\n  The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so\n      tell I my morning’s romanza,)\n  All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy,\n  The best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably reaps,\n  The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and he\n      domiciles there,\n  Nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for him,\n      the ships in the offing,\n  The perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they are for anybody.\n\n  He puts things in their attitudes,\n  He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,\n  He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and\n      sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest\n      never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.\n\n  He is the Answerer,\n  What can be answer’d he answers, and what cannot be answer’d he\n      shows how it cannot be answer’d.\n\n  A man is a summons and challenge,\n  (It is vain to skulk--do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you\n      hear the ironical echoes?)\n\n  Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride,\n      beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,\n  He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and\n      down also.\n\n  Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly\n      and gently and safely by day or by night,\n  He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of\n      hands on the knobs.\n\n  His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or\n      universal than he is,\n  The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.\n\n  Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,\n  He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and\n      any man translates, and any man translates himself also,\n  One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees\n      how they join.\n\n  He says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President\n      at his levee,\n  And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,\n  And both understand him and know that his speech is right.\n\n  He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,\n  He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another,\n      Here is our equal appearing and new.\n\n  Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,\n  And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that\n      he has follow’d the sea,\n  And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,\n  And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,\n  No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has\n      follow’d it,\n  No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and\n      sisters there.\n\n  The English believe he comes of their English stock,\n  A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near,\n      removed from none.\n\n  Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him,\n  The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, the Spaniard\n      is sure, and the island Cuban is sure
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Our Old Feuillage",
    "body": "  Always our old feuillage!\n  Always Florida’s green peninsula--always the priceless delta of\n      Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,\n  Always California’s golden hills and hollows, and the silver\n      mountains of New Mexico--always soft-breath’d Cuba,\n  Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern sea, inseparable with\n      the slopes drain’d by the Eastern and Western seas,\n  The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and a half\n      millions of square miles,\n  The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main,\n      the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,\n  The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of dwellings--\n      always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches,\n  Always the free range and diversity--always the continent of Democracy;\n  Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers,\n      Kanada, the snows;\n  Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing\n      the huge oval lakes;\n  Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing density there,\n      the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;\n  All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,\n  All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,\n  Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering,\n  On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats\n      wooding up,\n  Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys\n      of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke\n      and Delaware,\n  In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the\n      hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink,\n  In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the\n      water rocking silently,\n  In farmers’ barns oxen in the stable, their harvest labor done, they\n      rest standing, they are too tired,\n  Afar on arctic ice the she-walrus lying drowsily while her cubs play around,\n  The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail’d, the farthest polar\n      sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes,\n  White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,\n  On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight together,\n  In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of the\n      wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk,\n  In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in summer\n      visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming,\n  In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black\n      buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree tops,\n  Below, the red cedar festoon’d with tylandria, the pines and\n      cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat,\n  Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites with\n      color’d flowers and berries enveloping huge trees,\n  The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,\n      noiselessly waved by the wind,\n  The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires and\n      the cooking and eating by whites and negroes,\n  Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding\n      from troughs,\n  The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees,\n      the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine curling and rising;\n  Southern fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North\n      Carolina’s coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the\n      large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work’d by horses, the\n      clearing, curing, and packing-houses;\n  Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the\n      incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,\n  There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all\n      directions is cover’d with pine straw;\n  In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the c
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Song of Joys",
    "body": "  O to make the most jubilant song!\n  Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!\n  Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.\n\n  O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!\n  O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!\n  O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!\n\n  O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!\n  It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,\n  I will have thousands of globes and all time.\n\n  O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive!\n  To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the\n      laughing locomotive!\n  To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.\n\n  O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!\n  The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh\n      stillness of the woods,\n  The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.\n\n  O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!\n  The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool\n      gurgling by the ears and hair.\n\n  O the fireman’s joys!\n  I hear the alarm at dead of night,\n  I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!\n  The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.\n\n  O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena in\n      perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.\n\n  O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is\n      capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.\n\n  O the mother’s joys!\n  The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the\n      patiently yielded life.\n\n  O the of increase, growth, recuperation,\n  The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.\n\n  O to go back to the place where I was born,\n  To hear the birds sing once more,\n  To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,\n  And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.\n\n  O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,\n  To continue and be employ’d there all my life,\n  The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water,\n  The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;\n  I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear,\n  Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,\n  I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man;\n  In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot\n      on the ice--I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,\n  Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon,\n      my brood of tough boys accompanying me,\n  My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no\n      one else so well as they love to be with me,\n  By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.\n\n  Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots\n      where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys,)\n  O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row\n      just before sunrise toward the buoys,\n  I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are\n      desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert\n      wooden pegs in the ’oints of their pincers,\n\n  I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore,\n  There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil’d\n      till their color becomes scarlet.\n\n  Another time mackerel-taking,\n  Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the\n      water for miles;\n  Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the\n      brown-faced crew;\n  Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body,\n  My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the\n      coils of slender rope,\n  In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my\n      companions.\n\n  O boating o
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Broad-Axe",
    "body": "       1\n  Weapon shapely, naked, wan,\n  Head from the mother’s bowels drawn,\n  Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,\n  Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,\n  Resting the grass amid and upon,\n  To be lean’d and to lean on.\n\n  Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades,\n      sights and sounds.\n  Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,\n  Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.\n\n       2\n  Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind,\n  Welcome are lands of pine and oak,\n  Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,\n  Welcome are lands of gold,\n  Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the grape,\n  Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,\n  Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato and\n      sweet potato,\n  Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,\n  Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,\n  Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming soil of\n      orchards, flax, honey, hemp;\n  Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,\n  Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,\n  Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,\n  Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,\n  Lands of iron--lands of the make of the axe.\n\n       3\n  The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,\n  The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for garden,\n  The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull’d,\n  The walling and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,\n  The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends,\n      and the cutting away of masts,\n  The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion’d houses and barns,\n  The remember’d print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,\n      families, goods,\n  The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,\n  The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset\n      anywhere,\n  The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,\n  The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;\n  The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,\n  The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces,\n  The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,\n  The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless\n      impatience of restraint,\n  The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the\n      solidification;\n  The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and\n      sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,\n  Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of\n      snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,\n  The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural\n      life of the woods, the strong day’s work,\n  The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the\n      bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;\n  The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,\n  The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,\n  The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them\n      regular,\n  Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they\n      were prepared,\n  The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their\n      curv’d limbs,\n  Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by\n      posts and braces,\n  The hook’d arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,\n  The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail’d,\n  Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,\n  The echoes resounding through the vacant building:\n  The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,\n  The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully\n      bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,\n  The crowded line of masons with trowels in th
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Exposition",
    "body": "       1\n  (Ah little recks the laborer,\n  How near his work is holding him to God,\n  The loving Laborer through space and time.)\n\n  After all not to create only, or found only,\n  But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,\n  To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,\n  To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,\n  Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,\n  To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,\n  These also are the lessons of our New World;\n  While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!\n\n  Long and long has the grass been growing,\n  Long and long has the rain been falling,\n  Long has the globe been rolling round.\n\n       2\n  Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,\n  Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,\n  That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and AEneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings,\n  Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus,\n  Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa’s gate and on\n      Mount Moriah,\n  The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles,\n      and Italian collections,\n  For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain\n      awaits, demands you.\n\n       3\n  Responsive to our summons,\n  Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,\n  Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation,\n  She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,\n  I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance,\n  I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,\n  Upon this very scene.\n\n  The dame of dames! can I believe then,\n  Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?\n  Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old\n      associations, magnetize and hold on to her?\n  But that she’s left them all--and here?\n\n  Yes, if you will allow me to say so,\n  I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,\n  The same undying soul of earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s\n      expression,\n  Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,\n  Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s, foundation of to-day’s,\n  Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain,\n  Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-\n      baffling tombs,\n  Ended for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors, ended\n      the primitive call of the muses,\n  Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,\n  Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the\n      holy Graal,\n  Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,\n  The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,\n  Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,\n  Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its\n      waters reflected,\n  Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and\n      Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation;\n  Pass’d! pass’d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world,\n      now void, inanimate, phantom world,\n  Embroider’d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,\n  Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and\n      courtly dames,\n  Pass’d to its charnel vault, coffin’d with crown and armor on,\n  Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page,\n  And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme.\n\n  I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigre, (having it\n      is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,)\n  Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for\n      herself, striding through the confusion,\n  By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d,\n  Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,\n  Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,\n  She’s here, ins
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Redwood-Tree",
    "body": "       1\n  A California song,\n  A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,\n  A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,\n  A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,\n  Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.\n\n  Farewell my brethren,\n  Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,\n  My time has ended, my term has come.\n\n  Along the northern coast,\n  Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,\n  In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,\n  With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse,\n  With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong arms,\n  Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood\n      forest dense,\n  I heard the might tree its death-chant chanting.\n\n  The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,\n  The quick-ear’d teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,\n  As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to\n      join the refrain,\n  But in my soul I plainly heard.\n\n  Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,\n  Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,\n  Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,\n  That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but\n      the future.\n\n  You untold life of me,\n  And all you venerable and innocent joys,\n  Perennial hardy life of me with joys ’mid rain and many a summer sun,\n  And the white snows and night and the wild winds;\n  O the great patient rugged joys, my soul’s strong joys unreck’d by man,\n  (For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness, identity,\n  And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,)\n  Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,\n  Our time, our term has come.\n\n  Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,\n  We who have grandly fill’d our time,\n  With Nature’s calm content, with tacit huge delight,\n  We welcome what we wrought for through the past,\n  And leave the field for them.\n\n  For them predicted long,\n  For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,\n  For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings.’\n  In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta, Nevadas,\n  These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far Yosemite,\n  To be in them absorb’d, assimilated.\n\n  Then to a loftier strain,\n  Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,\n  As if the heirs, the deities of the West,\n  Joining with master-tongue bore part.\n\n  Not wan from Asia’s fetiches,\n  Nor red from Europe’s old dynastic slaughter-house,\n  (Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and\n      scaffolds everywhere,\n  But come from Nature’s long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence,\n  These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,\n  To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,\n  You promis’d long, we pledge, we dedicate.\n\n  You occult deep volitions,\n  You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois’d on yourself,\n      giving not taking law,\n  You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and\n      love and aught that comes from life and love,\n  You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, age\n      upon age working in death the same as life,)\n  You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould\n      the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,\n  You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal’d but ever alert,\n  You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may-be\n      unconscious of yourselves,\n  Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;\n  You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,\n      statutes, literatures,\n  Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,\n      lands of the Western shore,\n  We pledge, we dedicate to you.\n\n  For man of you, your characteristic race,\n  Here may he ha
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Song for Occupations",
    "body": "       1\n  A song for occupations!\n  In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find\n      the developments,\n  And find the eternal meanings.\n\n  Workmen and Workwomen!\n  Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of\n      me, what would it amount to?\n  Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,\n      what would it amount to?\n  Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?\n\n  The learn’d, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,\n  A man like me and never the usual terms.\n\n  Neither a servant nor a master I,\n  I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my\n      own whoever enjoys me,\n  I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.\n\n  If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in the\n      same shop,\n  If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as\n      good as your brother or dearest friend,\n  If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be\n      personally as welcome,\n  If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,\n  If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you think I\n      cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw’d deeds?\n  If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,\n  If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why\n      I often meet strangers in the street and love them.\n\n  Why what have you thought of yourself?\n  Is it you then that thought yourself less?\n  Is it you that thought the President greater than you?\n  Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?\n\n  (Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief,\n  Or that you are diseas’d, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,\n  Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and never\n      saw your name in print,\n  Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)\n\n       2\n  Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,\n      untouchable and untouching,\n  It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether\n      you are alive or no,\n  I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.\n\n  Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,\n      in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,\n  And all else behind or through them.\n\n  The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,\n  The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,\n  The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.\n\n  Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,\n  Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,\n  Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,\n  All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,\n  None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.\n\n  I bring what you much need yet always have,\n  Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,\n  I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but\n      offer the value itself.\n\n  There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,\n  It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussion\n      and print,\n  It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,\n  It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your\n      hearing and sight are from you,\n  It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.\n\n  You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,\n  You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it there,\n  Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury\n      department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,\n  Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts\n      of stock.\n\n       3\n  The sun and stars that float in the open air,\n  The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is\n      something grand,\n  I do not know what it is except that it is gra
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Song of the Rolling Earth",
    "body": "       1\n  A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,\n  Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?\n      those curves, angles, dots?\n  No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground\n      and sea,\n  They are in the air, they are in you.\n\n  Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds\n      out of your friends’ mouths?\n  No, the real words are more delicious than they.\n\n  Human bodies are words, myriads of words,\n  (In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s,\n      well-shaped, natural, gay,\n  Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)\n\n  Air, soil, water, fire--those are words,\n  I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with\n      theirs--my name is nothing to them,\n  Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would\n      air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?\n\n  A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,\n      sayings, meanings,\n  The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,\n      are sayings and meanings also.\n\n  The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,\n  The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible words.\n\n  Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,\n  The earth neither lags nor hastens,\n  It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump,\n  It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as\n      much as perfections show.\n\n  The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,\n  The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either,\n  They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,\n  They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,\n  Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,\n  I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?\n  To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?\n\n  (Accouche! accouchez!\n  Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?\n  Will you squat and stifle there?)\n\n  The earth does not argue,\n  Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,\n  Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,\n  Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,\n  Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,\n  Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.\n\n  The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,\n      possesses still underneath,\n  Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the\n      wail of slaves,\n  Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young\n      people, accents of bargainers,\n  Underneath these possessing words that never fall.\n\n  To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail,\n  The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection\n      does not fall,\n  Also the day and night do not fall, and the voyage we pursue does not fall.\n\n  Of the interminable sisters,\n  Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,\n  Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,\n  The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.\n\n  With her ample back towards every beholder,\n  With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age,\n  Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturb’d,\n  Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her\n      eyes glance back from it,\n  Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,\n  Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.\n\n  Seen at hand or seen at a distance,\n  Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,\n  Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,\n  Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances\n      of those who are with them,\n  From the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance,\n  From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things,\n  From the landscap
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Youth, Day, Old Age and Night",
    "body": "  Youth, large, lusty, loving--youth full of grace, force, fascination,\n  Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,\n      force, fascination?\n\n  Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action,\n      ambition, laughter,\n  The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and\n      restoring darkness.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Universal",
    "body": "       1\n  Come said the Muse,\n  Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,\n  Sing me the universal.\n\n  In this broad earth of ours,\n  Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,\n  Enclosed and safe within its central heart,\n  Nestles the seed perfection.\n\n  By every life a share or more or less,\n  None born but it is born, conceal’d or unconceal’d the seed is waiting.\n\n       2\n  Lo! keen-eyed towering science,\n  As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,\n  Successive absolute fiats issuing.\n\n  Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,\n  For it has history gather’d like husks around the globe,\n  For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.\n\n  In spiral routes by long detours,\n  (As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)\n  For it the partial to the permanent flowing,\n  For it the real to the ideal tends.\n\n  For it the mystic evolution,\n  Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.\n\n  Forth from their masks, no matter what,\n  From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,\n  Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.\n\n  Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,\n  Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states,\n  Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,\n  Only the good is universal.\n\n       3\n  Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,\n  An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,\n  High in the purer, happier air.\n\n  From imperfection’s murkiest cloud,\n  Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,\n  One flash of heaven’s glory.\n\n  To fashion’s, custom’s discord,\n  To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,\n  Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,\n  From some far shore the final chorus sounding.\n\n  O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,\n  That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,\n  Along the mighty labyrinth.\n\n       4\n  And thou America,\n  For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,\n  For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.\n\n  Thou too surroundest all,\n  Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new,\n  To the ideal tendest.\n\n  The measure’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,\n  Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,\n  Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,\n  All eligible to all.\n\n  All, all for immortality,\n  Love like the light silently wrapping all,\n  Nature’s amelioration blessing all,\n  The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,\n  Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.\n\n  Give me O God to sing that thought,\n  Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,\n  In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,\n  Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,\n  Health, peace, salvation universal.\n\n  Is it a dream?\n  Nay but the lack of it the dream,\n  And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,\n  And all the world a dream.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Pioneers! O Pioneers!",
    "body": "       Come my tan-faced children,\n  Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,\n  Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       For we cannot tarry here,\n  We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,\n  We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       O you youths, Western youths,\n  So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,\n  Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       Have the elder races halted?\n  Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?\n  We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       All the past we leave behind,\n  We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,\n  Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       We detachments steady throwing,\n  Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,\n  Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       We primeval forests felling,\n  We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,\n  We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       Colorado men are we,\n  From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,\n  From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       From Nebraska, from Arkansas,\n  Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental\n       blood intervein’d,\n  All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       O resistless restless race!\n  O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!\n  O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       Raise the mighty mother mistress,\n  Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,\n       (bend your heads all,)\n  Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       See my children, resolute children,\n  By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,\n  Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       On and on the compact ranks,\n  With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,\n  Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       O to die advancing on!\n  Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?\n  Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d.\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       All the pulses of the world,\n  Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,\n  Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n       Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,\n  All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,\n  All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n      All the hapless silent lovers,\n  All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,\n  All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n      I too with my soul and body,\n  We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,\n  Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n      Lo, the darting bowling orb!\n  Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,\n  All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,\n       Pioneers! O pioneers!\n\n      These are of us, they are with us,\n  All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,\n  We to-day’s procession heading
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To You",
    "body": "  Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,\n  I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,\n  Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,\n      troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,\n  Your true soul and body appear before me.\n  They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,\n      farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,\n      suffering, dying.\n\n  Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,\n  I whisper with my lips close to your ear.\n  I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.\n\n  O I have been dilatory and dumb,\n  I should have made my way straight to you long ago,\n  I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing\n      but you.\n\n  I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,\n  None has understood you, but I understand you,\n  None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,\n  None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,\n  None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent\n      to subordinate you,\n  I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,\n      beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.\n\n  Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,\n  From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light,\n  But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus\n      of gold-color’d light,\n  From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,\n      effulgently flowing forever.\n\n  O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!\n  You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself\n      all your life,\n  Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,\n  What you have done returns already in mockeries,\n  (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in\n      mockeries, what is their return?)\n\n  The mockeries are not you,\n  Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,\n  I pursue you where none else has pursued you,\n  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the\n      accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from\n      yourself, they do not conceal you from me,\n  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these\n      balk others they do not balk me,\n  The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,\n      premature death, all these I part aside.\n\n  There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,\n  There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,\n  No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,\n  No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.\n\n  As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully\n      to you,\n  I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing\n      the songs of the glory of you.\n\n  Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!\n  These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,\n  These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense\n      and interminable as they,\n  These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent\n      dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,\n  Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,\n      passion, dissolution.\n\n  The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,\n  Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,\n      whatever you are promulges itself,\n  Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing\n      is scanted,\n  Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are\n      picks its way.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "France [the 18th Year of these States",
    "body": "  A great year and place\n  A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s\n      heart closer than any yet.\n\n  I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,\n  Heard over the waves the little voice,\n  Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the\n      roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings,\n  Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single\n      corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils,\n  Was not so desperate at the battues of death--was not so shock’d at\n      the repeated fusillades of the guns.\n\n  Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?\n  Could I wish humanity different?\n  Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?\n  Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?\n\n  O Liberty! O mate for me!\n  Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch\n      them out in case of need,\n  Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d,\n  Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,\n  Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.\n\n  Hence I sign this salute over the sea,\n  And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,\n  But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with\n      perfect trust, no matter how long,\n  And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as\n      for all lands,\n  And I send these words to Paris with my love,\n  And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,\n  For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,\n  O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be\n      drowning all that would interrupt them,\n  O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,\n  It reaches hither, it swells me to Joyful madness,\n  I will run transpose it in words, to justify\n  I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Myself and Mine",
    "body": "  Myself and mine gymnastic ever,\n  To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a\n      boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,\n  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,\n  And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.\n\n  Not for an embroiderer,\n  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,)\n  But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.\n\n  Not to chisel ornaments,\n  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous\n      supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and talking.\n\n  Let me have my own way,\n  Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws,\n  Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation\n      and conflict,\n  I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was\n      thought most worthy.\n\n  (Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?\n  Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all\n      your life?\n  And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,\n  Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)\n\n  Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,\n  I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern\n      continually.\n\n  I give nothing as duties,\n  What others give as duties I give as living impulses,\n  (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)\n\n  Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse\n      unanswerable questions,\n  Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?\n  What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender\n      directions and indirections?\n\n  I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but\n      listen to my enemies, as I myself do,\n  I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot\n      expound myself,\n  I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,\n  I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.\n\n  After me, vista!\n  O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,\n  I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a\n      steady grower,\n  Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.\n\n  I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,\n  I perceive I have no time to lose.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Year of Meteors [1859-60",
    "body": "  Year of meteors! brooding year!\n  I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,\n  I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,\n  I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the\n      scaffold in Virginia,\n  (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,\n  I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling\n      with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;)\n  I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,\n  The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships\n      and their cargoes,\n  The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with\n      immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,\n  Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,\n  And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young\n      prince of England!\n  (Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your\n      cortege of nobles?\n  There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)\n  Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,\n  Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was\n      600 feet long,\n  Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not\n      to sing;\n  Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,\n  Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting\n      over our heads,\n  (A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over\n      our heads,\n  Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)\n  Of such, and fitful as they, I sing--with gleams from them would\n      gleam and patch these chants,\n  Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good--year of forebodings!\n  Year of comets and meteors transient and strange--lo! even here one\n      equally transient and strange!\n  As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,\n  What am I myself but one of your meteors?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "With Antecedents",
    "body": "       1\n  With antecedents,\n  With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages,\n  With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am,\n  With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome,\n  With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon,\n  With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and journeys,\n  With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle,\n  With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the\n      crusader, and the monk,\n  With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent,\n  With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,\n  With the fading religions and priests,\n  With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores,\n  With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at these years,\n  You and me arrived--America arrived and making this year,\n  This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.\n\n       2\n  O but it is not the years--it is I, it is You,\n  We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,\n  We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily\n      include them and more,\n  We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid evil and good,\n  All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,\n  The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,\n  Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.\n\n  As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)\n  I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,\n  I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.\n\n  (Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?\n  Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)\n\n  I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,\n  I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demigod,\n  I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without\n      exception,\n  I assert that all past days were what they must have been,\n  And that they could no-how have been better than they were,\n  And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,\n  And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.\n\n       3\n  In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,\n  And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the Present time.\n\n  I know that the past was great and the future will be great,\n  And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,\n  (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake,\n      your sake if you are he,)\n  And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre\n      of all days, all races,\n  And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races\n      and days, or ever will come.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Broadway Pageant",
    "body": "       1\n  Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,\n  Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,\n  Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,\n  Ride to-day through Manhattan.\n\n  Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,\n  In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-bearers,\n  Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching,\n  But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.\n\n  When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements,\n  When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar love,\n  When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love\n      spit their salutes,\n  When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and\n      heaven-clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,\n  When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the\n      wharves, thicken with colors,\n  When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,\n  When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,\n  When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and\n      foot-standers, when the mass is densest,\n  When the facades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes\n      gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,\n  When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant moves\n      forward visible,\n  When the summons is made, when the answer that waited thousands\n      of years answers,\n  I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the\n      crowd, and gaze with them.\n\n       2\n  Superb-faced Manhattan!\n  Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.\n  To us, my city,\n  Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite\n      sides, to walk in the space between,\n  To-day our Antipodes comes.\n\n  The Originatress comes,\n  The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld,\n  Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,\n  Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,\n  With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,\n  The race of Brahma comes.\n\n  See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the procession,\n  As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing before us.\n\n\n  For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only,\n  Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself\n      appears, the past, the dead,\n  The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,\n  The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,\n  The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, the\n      ancient of ancients,\n  Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more\n      are in the pageant-procession.\n\n  Geography, the world, is in it,\n  The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond,\n  The coast you henceforth are facing--you Libertad! from your Western\n      golden shores,\n  The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse\n      are curiously here,\n  The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along the\n      sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,\n  Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,\n  The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the\n      secluded emperors,\n  Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the castes,\n      all,\n  Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay mountains,\n  From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,\n  From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands, from\n      Malaysia,\n  These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me, and\n      are seiz’d by me,\n  And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them,\n  Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.\n\n  For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,\n  I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,\n  I chant the world on my Wester
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking",
    "body": "  Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,\n  Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,\n  Out of the Ninth-month midnight,\n  Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child\n      leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,\n  Down from the shower’d halo,\n  Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they\n      were alive,\n  Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,\n  From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,\n  From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,\n  From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,\n  From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,\n  From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,\n  From the myriad thence-arous’d words,\n  From the word stronger and more delicious than any,\n  From such as now they start the scene revisiting,\n  As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,\n  Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,\n  A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,\n  Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,\n  I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,\n  Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,\n  A reminiscence sing.\n\n  Once Paumanok,\n  When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,\n  Up this seashore in some briers,\n  Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,\n  And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,\n  And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,\n  And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,\n  And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing\n  them,\n  Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.\n\n  Shine! shine! shine!\n  Pour down your warmth, great sun.’\n  While we bask, we two together.\n\n  Two together!\n  Winds blow south, or winds blow north,\n  Day come white, or night come black,\n  Home, or rivers and mountains from home,\n  Singing all time, minding no time,\n  While we two keep together.\n\n  Till of a sudden,\n  May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,\n  One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,\n  Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,\n  Nor ever appear’d again.\n\n  And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,\n  And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,\n  Over the hoarse surging of the sea,\n  Or flitting from brier to brier by day,\n  I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,\n  The solitary guest from Alabama.\n\n  Blow! blow! blow!\n  Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;\n  I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.\n\n  Yes, when the stars glisten’d,\n  All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,\n  Down almost amid the slapping waves,\n  Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.\n\n  He call’d on his mate,\n  He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.\n\n  Yes my brother I know,\n  The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,\n  For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,\n  Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,\n  Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights\n      after their sorts,\n  The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,\n  I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,\n  Listen’d long and long.\n\n  Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,\n  Following you my brother.\n\n  Soothe! soothe! soothe!\n  Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,\n  And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,\n  But my love soothes not me, not me.\n\n  Low hangs the moon, it rose late,\n  It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.\n\n  O madly the sea pushes upon the land,\n  With love, with love.\n\n  O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?\n  What is that little black thing I see there in the white?\n\n  Loud! loud! loud!\n  Loud I call to you, my lo
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life",
    "body": "       1\n  As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,\n  As I wended the shores I know,\n  As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,\n  Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,\n  Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,\n  I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,\n  Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,\n  Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,\n  The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land\n      of the globe.\n\n  Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those\n      slender windrows,\n  Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,\n  Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,\n  Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,\n  Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses,\n  These you presented to me you fish-shaped island,\n  As I wended the shores I know,\n  As I walk’d with that electric self seeking types.\n\n       2\n  As I wend to the shores I know not,\n  As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,\n  As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,\n  As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,\n  I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,\n  A few sands and dead leaves to gather,\n  Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.\n\n  O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,\n  Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,\n  Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have\n      not once had the least idea who or what I am,\n  But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet\n      untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,\n  Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,\n  With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,\n  Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.\n\n  I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single\n      object, and that no man ever can,\n  Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon\n      me and sting me,\n  Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.\n\n       3\n  You oceans both, I close with you,\n  We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why,\n  These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all.\n\n  You friable shore with trails of debris,\n  You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot,\n  What is yours is mine my father.\n\n  I too Paumanok,\n  I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been\n      wash’d on your shores,\n  I too am but a trail of drift and debris,\n  I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.\n\n  I throw myself upon your breast my father,\n  I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,\n  I hold you so firm till you answer me something.\n\n  Kiss me my father,\n  Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,\n  Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy.\n\n       4\n  Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)\n  Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,\n  Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me,\n  Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or\n      gather from you.\n\n  I mean tenderly by you and all,\n  I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead,\n      and following me and mine.\n\n  Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,\n  Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,\n  (See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,\n  See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)\n  Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,\n  Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another,\n  From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,\n  Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,\n  Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,\n  A limp blossom or two, 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Tears",
    "body": "  Tears! tears! tears!\n  In the night, in solitude, tears,\n  On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck’d in by the sand,\n  Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,\n  Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;\n  O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?\n  What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch’d there on the sand?\n  Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries;\n  O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!\n  O wild and dismal night storm, with wind--O belching and desperate!\n  O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and\n      regulated pace,\n  But away at night as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosen’d ocean,\n  Of tears! tears! tears!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the Man-of-War-Bird",
    "body": "  Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,\n  Waking renew’d on thy prodigious pinions,\n  (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended’st,\n  And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)\n  Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,\n  As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,\n  (Myself a speck, a point on the world’s floating vast.)\n\n  Far, far at sea,\n  After the night’s fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,\n  With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,\n  The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,\n  The limpid spread of air cerulean,\n  Thou also re-appearest.\n\n  Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)\n  To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,\n  Thou ship of air that never furl’st thy sails,\n  Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,\n  At dusk that lookist on Senegal, at morn America,\n  That sport’st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,\n  In them, in thy experiences, had’st thou my soul,\n  What joys! what joys were thine!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Aboard at a Ship’s Helm",
    "body": "  Aboard at a ship’s helm,\n  A young steersman steering with care.\n\n  Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,\n  An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves.\n\n  O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,\n  Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.\n\n  For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,\n  The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails,\n  The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds\n      away gayly and safe.\n\n  But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!\n  Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "On the Beach at Night",
    "body": "  On the beach at night,\n  Stands a child with her father,\n  Watching the east, the autumn sky.\n\n  Up through the darkness,\n  While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,\n  Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,\n  Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,\n  Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,\n  And nigh at hand, only a very little above,\n  Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.\n\n  From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,\n  Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,\n  Watching, silently weeps.\n\n  Weep not, child,\n  Weep not, my darling,\n  With these kisses let me remove your tears,\n  The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,\n  They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in\n      apparition,\n  Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the\n      Pleiades shall emerge,\n  They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall\n      shine out again,\n  The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,\n  The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall\n      again shine.\n\n  Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter?\n  Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?\n\n  Something there is,\n  (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,\n  I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)\n  Something there is more immortal even than the stars,\n  (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)\n  Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter\n  Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,\n  Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The World below the Brine",
    "body": "  The world below the brine,\n  Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,\n  Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick\n      tangle openings, and pink turf,\n  Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the\n      play of light through the water,\n  Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,\n      and the aliment of the swimmers,\n  Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling\n      close to the bottom,\n  The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting\n      with his flukes,\n  The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy\n      sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,\n  Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,\n      breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,\n  The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed\n      by beings like us who walk this sphere,\n  The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "On the Beach at Night Alone",
    "body": "  On the beach at night alone,\n  As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,\n  As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef\n      of the universes and of the future.\n\n  A vast similitude interlocks all,\n  All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,\n  All distances of place however wide,\n  All distances of time, all inanimate forms,\n  All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in\n      different worlds,\n  All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,\n  All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,\n  All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,\n  All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,\n  This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,\n  And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song for All Seas, All Ships",
    "body": "       1\n  To-day a rude brief recitative,\n  Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal,\n  Of unnamed heroes in the ships--of waves spreading and spreading\n      far as the eye can reach,\n  Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing,\n  And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations,\n  Fitful, like a surge.\n\n  Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors,\n  Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor\n      death dismay.\n  Pick’d sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee,\n  Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations,\n  Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee,\n  Indomitable, untamed as thee.\n\n  (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,\n  Ever the stock preserv’d and never lost, though rare, enough for\n      seed preserv’d.)\n\n       2\n  Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!\n  Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!\n  But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man\n      one flag above all the rest,\n  A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,\n  Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates,\n  And all that went down doing their duty,\n  Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old,\n  A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all brave sailors,\n  All seas, all ships.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Patroling Barnegat",
    "body": "  Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,\n  Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,\n  Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,\n  Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,\n  Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,\n  On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,\n  Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,\n  Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,\n  (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)\n  Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,\n  Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,\n  Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,\n  A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,\n  That savage trinity warily watching.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "After the Sea-Ship",
    "body": "  After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,\n  After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,\n  Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,\n  Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,\n  Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,\n  Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,\n  Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,\n  Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,\n  Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing,\n  The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome\n      under the sun,\n  A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,\n  Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Boston Ballad [1854]",
    "body": "  To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early,\n  Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.\n\n  Clear the way there Jonathan!\n  Way for the President’s marshal--way for the government cannon!\n  Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions\n      copiously tumbling.)\n\n  I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play\n      Yankee Doodle.\n  How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!\n  Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.\n\n  A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,\n  Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.\n\n  Why this is indeed a show--it has called the dead out of the earth!\n  The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!\n  Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!\n  Cock’d hats of mothy mould--crutches made of mist!\n  Arms in slings--old men leaning on young men’s shoulders.\n\n  What troubles you Yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of\n      bare gums?\n  Does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your crutches for\n      firelocks and level them?\n\n  If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President’s marshal,\n  If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.\n\n  For shame old maniacs--bring down those toss’d arms, and let your\n      white hair be,\n  Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows,\n  See how well dress’d, see how orderly they conduct themselves.\n\n  Worse and worse--can’t you stand it? are you retreating?\n  Is this hour with the living too dead for you?\n\n  Retreat then--pell-mell!\n  To your graves--back--back to the hills old limpers!\n  I do not think you belong here anyhow.\n\n  But there is one thing that belongs here--shall I tell you what it\n      is, gentlemen of Boston?\n\n  I will whisper it to the Mayor, he shall send a committee to England,\n  They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the\n      royal vault,\n  Dig out King George’s coffin, unwrap him quick from the\n      graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey,\n  Find a swift Yankee clipper--here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper,\n  Up with your anchor--shake out your sails--steer straight toward\n      Boston bay.\n\n  Now call for the President’s marshal again, bring out the government cannon,\n  Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession,\n      guard it with foot and dragoons.\n\n  This centre-piece for them;\n  Look, all orderly citizens--look from the windows, women!\n\n  The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that\n      will not stay,\n  Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.\n  You have got your revenge, old buster--the crown is come to its own,\n      and more than its own.\n\n  Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan--you are a made man from\n      this day,\n  You are mighty cute--and here is one of your bargains.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]",
    "body": "  Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,\n  Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself,\n  Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats\n      of kings.\n\n  O hope and faith!\n  O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!\n  O many a sicken’d heart!\n  Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.\n\n  And you, paid to defile the People--you liars, mark!\n  Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,\n  For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his\n      simplicity the poor man’s wages,\n  For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh’d at in\n      the breaking,\n\n  Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge,\n      or the heads of the nobles fall;\n  The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.\n\n  But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the\n      frighten’d monarchs come back,\n  Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,\n  Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.\n\n  Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape,\n  Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in\n      scarlet folds,\n  Whose face and eyes none may see,\n  Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm,\n  One finger crook’d pointed high over the top, like the head of a\n      snake appears.\n\n  Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men,\n  The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are\n      flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,\n  And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.\n\n  Those corpses of young men,\n  Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc’d by\n      the gray lead,\n  Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality.\n\n  They live in other young men O kings!\n  They live in brothers again ready to defy you,\n  They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.\n\n  Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom,\n      in its turn to bear seed,\n  Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.\n\n  Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,\n  But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.\n  Liberty, let others despair of you--I never despair of you.\n\n  Is the house shut? is the master away?\n  Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,\n  He will soon return, his messengers come anon.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Hand-Mirror",
    "body": "  Hold it up sternly--see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?)\n  Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth,\n  No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,\n  Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,\n  A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,\n  Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,\n  Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,\n  Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,\n  Words babble, hearing and touch callous,\n  No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;\n  Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,\n  Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gods",
    "body": "  Lover divine and perfect Comrade,\n  Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,\n  Be thou my God.\n\n  Thou, thou, the Ideal Man,\n  Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,\n  Complete in body and dilate in spirit,\n  Be thou my God.\n\n  O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)\n  Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion,\n  Be thou my God.\n\n  Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,\n  (To break the stagnant tie--thee, thee to free, O soul,)\n  Be thou my God.\n\n  All great ideas, the races’ aspirations,\n  All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,\n  Be ye my Gods.\n\n  Or Time and Space,\n  Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,\n  Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,\n  Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,\n  Be ye my Gods.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Germs",
    "body": "  Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,\n  The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars,\n  The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,\n  Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants,\n      whatever they may be,\n  Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects,\n  Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand\n      provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and\n      half enclose with my hand,\n  That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thoughts",
    "body": "  Of ownership--as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter\n      upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself;\n  Of vista--suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos,\n      presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey,\n  (But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;)\n  Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become\n      supplied--and of what will yet be supplied,\n  Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in\n      what will yet be supplied.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer",
    "body": "  When I heard the learn’d astronomer,\n  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,\n  When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,\n  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much\n      applause in the lecture-room,\n  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,\n  Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,\n  In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,\n  Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Perfections",
    "body": "  Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,\n  As souls only understand souls.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Me! O Life!",
    "body": "  O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,\n  Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,\n  Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,\n      and who more faithless?)\n  Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the\n      struggle ever renew’d,\n  Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see\n      around me,\n  Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,\n  The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?\n\n       Answer.\n  That you are here--that life exists and identity,\n  That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a President",
    "body": "  All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,\n  You have not learn’d of Nature--of the politics of Nature you have\n      not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality,\n  You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,\n  And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from\n      these States.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Sit and Look Out",
    "body": "  I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all\n      oppression and shame,\n  I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with\n      themselves, remorseful after deeds done,\n  I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,\n      neglected, gaunt, desperate,\n  I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer\n      of young women,\n  I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be\n      hid, I see these sights on the earth,\n  I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and\n      prisoners,\n  I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who\n      shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,\n  I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon\n      laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;\n  All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,\n  See, hear, and am silent.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Rich Givers",
    "body": "  What you give me I cheerfully accept,\n  A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I\n      rendezvous with my poems,\n  A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as journey through the States,--\n      why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them?\n  For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman,\n  For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of\n      the universe.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dalliance of the Eagles",
    "body": "  Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)\n  Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,\n  The rushing amorous contact high in space together,\n  The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,\n  Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,\n  In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,\n  Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,\n  A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,\n  Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,\n  She hers, he his, pursuing.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]",
    "body": "  Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good\n      steadily hastening towards immortality,\n  And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself\n      and become lost and dead.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Farm Picture",
    "body": "  Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,\n  A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,\n  And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Child’s Amaze",
    "body": "  Silent and amazed even when a little boy,\n  I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,\n  As contending against some being or influence.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Runner",
    "body": "  On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner,\n  He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,\n  He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,\n  With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beautiful Women",
    "body": "  Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,\n  The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mother and Babe",
    "body": "  I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother,\n  The sleeping mother and babe--hush’d, I study them long and long.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thought",
    "body": "  Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;\n  As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly\n      affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who\n      do not believe in men.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Visor’d",
    "body": "  A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,\n  Concealing her face, concealing her form,\n  Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,\n  Falling upon her even when she sleeps.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thought",
    "body": "  Of justice--as If could be any thing but the same ample law,\n      expounded by natural judges and saviors,\n  As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Gliding O’er all",
    "body": "  Gliding o’er all, through all,\n  Through Nature, Time, and Space,\n  As a ship on the waters advancing,\n  The voyage of the soul--not life alone,\n  Death, many deaths I’ll sing.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour",
    "body": "  Hast never come to thee an hour,\n  A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,\n      fashions, wealth?\n  These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,\n  To utter nothingness?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thought",
    "body": "  Of Equality--as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and\n      rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own\n      rights that others possess the same.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Old Age",
    "body": "  I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as\n      it pours in the great sea.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Locations and Times",
    "body": "  Locations and times--what is it in me that meets them all, whenever\n      and wherever, and makes me at home?\n  Forms, colors, densities, odors--what is it in me that corresponds\n      with them?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Offerings",
    "body": "  A thousand perfect men and women appear,\n  Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and\n      youths, with offerings.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]",
    "body": "  Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?\n  What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters,\n  Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?\n  What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,\n      your arctic freezings!)\n  Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that\n      the President?\n  Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for\n      reasons;\n  (With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we\n      all duly awake,\n  South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "First O Songs for a Prelude",
    "body": "  First O songs for a prelude,\n  Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,\n  How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,\n  How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,\n  (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!\n  O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)\n  How you sprang--how you threw off the costumes of peace with\n      indifferent hand,\n  How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard\n      in their stead,\n  How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of\n      soldiers,)\n  How Manhattan drum-taps led.\n\n  Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,\n  Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and\n      turbulent city,\n  Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,\n  With her million children around her, suddenly,\n  At dead of night, at news from the south,\n  Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.\n\n  A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,\n  Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.\n\n  From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,\n  Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.\n\n  To the drum-taps prompt,\n  The young men falling in and arming,\n  The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s\n      hammer, tost aside with precipitation,)\n  The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,\n  The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing\n      the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs,\n  The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;\n  Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,\n  The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their\n      accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,\n  Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,\n  The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the\n      sunrise cannon and again at sunset,\n  Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark\n      from the wharves,\n  (How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with\n      their guns on their shoulders!\n  How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and\n      their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)\n  The blood of the city up-arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere,\n  The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the\n      public buildings and stores,\n  The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother,\n  (Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,)\n  The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,\n  The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites,\n  The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along,\n      rumble lightly over the stones,\n  (Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,\n  Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;)\n  All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming,\n  The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,\n  The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no\n      mere parade now;\n  War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away!\n  War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to\n      welcome it.\n\n  Mannahatta a-march--and it’s O to sing it well!\n  It’s O for a manly life in the camp.\n\n  And the sturdy artillery,\n  The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,\n  Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for\n      courtesies merely,\n  Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)\n\n  And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,\n  Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,\n  Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d amid\n      all your children,\n  But now you smile with joy exul
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Eighteen Sixty-One",
    "body": "  Arm’d year--year of the struggle,\n  No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,\n  Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano,\n  But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,\n      carrying rifle on your shoulder,\n  With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in\n      the belt at your side,\n  As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across the\n      continent,\n  Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,\n  Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the\n      dwellers in Manhattan,\n  Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,\n  Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the Allghanies,\n  Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along\n      the Ohio river,\n  Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at\n      Chattanooga on the mountain top,\n  Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing\n      weapons, robust year,\n  Heard your determin’d voice launch’d forth again and again,\n  Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon,\n  I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Beat! Beat! Drums!",
    "body": "  Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!\n  Through the windows--through doors--burst like a ruthless force,\n  Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,\n  Into the school where the scholar is studying;\n  Leave not the bridegroom quiet--no happiness must he have now with\n      his bride,\n  Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering\n      his grain,\n  So fierce you whirr and pound you drums--so shrill you bugles blow.\n\n  Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!\n  Over the traffic of cities--over the rumble of wheels in the streets;\n  Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers\n      must sleep in those beds,\n  No bargainers’ bargains by day--no brokers or speculators--would\n      they continue?\n  Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?\n  Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?\n  Then rattle quicker, heavier drums--you bugles wilder blow.\n\n  Beat! beat! drums!--blow! bugles! blow!\n  Make no parley--stop for no expostulation,\n  Mind not the timid--mind not the weeper or prayer,\n  Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,\n  Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,\n  Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the\n      hearses,\n  So strong you thump O terrible drums--so loud you bugles blow.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird",
    "body": "  From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird,\n  Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all,\n  To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs,\n  To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,\n  To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)\n  Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas and\n      Arkansas to sing theirs,\n  To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to sing theirs,\n  To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere;\n  To sing first, (to the tap of the war-drum if need be,)\n  The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable,\n  And then the song of each member of these States.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of the Banner at Daybreak",
    "body": "       Poet:\n  O A new song, a free song,\n  Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,\n  By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,\n  By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice,\n  Low on the ground and high in the air,\n  On the ground where father and child stand,\n  In the upward air where their eyes turn,\n  Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.\n\n  Words! book-words! what are you?\n  Words no more, for hearken and see,\n  My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,\n  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.\n\n  I’ll weave the chord and twine in,\n  Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,\n  I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz,\n  (As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,\n  Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)\n  I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,\n  Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,\n  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.\n\n       Pennant:\n  Come up here, bard, bard,\n  Come up here, soul, soul,\n  Come up here, dear little child,\n  To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.\n\n       Child:\n  Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?\n  And what does it say to me all the while?\n\n       Father:\n  Nothing my babe you see in the sky,\n  And nothing at all to you it says--but look you my babe,\n  Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-\n      shops opening,\n  And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;\n  These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!\n  How envied by all the earth.\n\n       Poet:\n  Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,\n  On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,\n  On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,\n  The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,\n  Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.\n\n  But I am not the sea nor the red sun,\n  I am not the wind with girlish laughter,\n  Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,\n  Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,\n  But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,\n  Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,\n  Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,\n  And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,\n  Aloft there flapping and flapping.\n\n       Child:\n  O father it is alive--it is full of people--it has children,\n  O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,\n  I hear it--it talks to me--O it is wonderful!\n  O it stretches--it spreads and runs so fast--O my father,\n  It is so broad it covers the whole sky.\n\n       Father:\n  Cease, cease, my foolish babe,\n  What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much ’t displeases me;\n  Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,\n  But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d houses.\n\n       Banner and Pennant:\n  Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,\n  To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,\n  Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all--and yet we know\n      not why,\n  For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,\n  Only flapping in the wind?\n\n\n      Poet:\n  I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,\n  I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,\n  I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!\n  I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,\n  I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,\n  I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird,\n      and look down as from a height,\n  I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities\n      with wealth incalculable,\n  I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps",
    "body": "       1\n  Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep,\n  Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me,\n  Long I roam’d amid the woods of the north, long I watch’d Niagara pouring,\n  I travel’d the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross’d\n      the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus,\n  I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea,\n  I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm,\n  I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves,\n\n  I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over,\n  I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds,\n  Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my\n      heart, and powerful!)\n  Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow’d after the lightning,\n  Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and\n      fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;\n  These, and such as these, I, elate, saw--saw with wonder, yet pensive\n      and masterful,\n  All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,\n  Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.\n\n       2\n  ’Twas well, O soul--’twas a good preparation you gave me,\n  Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,\n  Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us,\n  Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities,\n  Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,\n  Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed\n      inexhaustible?)\n  What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of\n      the mountains and sea?\n  What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen?\n  Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?\n  Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage,\n  Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front--Cincinnati, Chicago,\n      unchain’d;\n  What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here,\n  How it climbs with daring feet and hands--how it dashes!\n  How the true thunder bellows after the lightning--how bright the\n      flashes of lightning!\n  How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown\n      through the dark by those flashes of lightning!\n  (Yet a mournful wall and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,\n  In a lull of the deafening confusion.)\n\n       3\n  Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!\n  And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities!\n  Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,\n  My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment,\n  Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads through farms, only\n      half satisfied,\n  One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me,\n  Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low;\n  The cities I loved so well I abandon’d and left, I sped to the\n      certainties suitable to me,\n  Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature’s\n      dauntlessness,\n  I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only,\n  I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air\n      waited long;\n  But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,\n  I have witness’d the true lightning, I have witness’d my cities electric,\n  I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,\n  Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,\n  No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Virginia--The West",
    "body": "  The noble sire fallen on evil days,\n  I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,\n  (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)\n  The insane knife toward the Mother of All.\n\n  The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,\n  I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio’s waters and of Indiana,\n  To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,\n  Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.\n\n  Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,\n  As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive against\n      me, and why seek my life?\n  When you yourself forever provide to defend me?\n  For you provided me Washington--and now these also.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "City of Ships",
    "body": "  City of ships!\n  (O the black ships! O the fierce ships!\n  O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)\n  City of the world! (for all races are here,\n  All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)\n  City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!\n  City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and\n      out with eddies and foam!\n  City of wharves and stores--city of tall facades of marble and iron!\n  Proud and passionate city--mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!\n  Spring up O city--not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!\n  Fear not--submit to no models but your own O city!\n  Behold me--incarnate me as I have incarnated you!\n  I have rejected nothing you offer’d me--whom you adopted I have adopted,\n  Good or bad I never question you--I love all--I do not condemn any thing,\n  I chant and celebrate all that is yours--yet peace no more,\n  In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,\n  War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Centenarian’s Story",
    "body": "       [Volunteer of 1861-2, at Washington Park, Brooklyn, assisting\n       the Centenarian.]\n  Give me your hand old Revolutionary,\n  The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,)\n  Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and\n      extra years,\n  You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done,\n  Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.\n\n  Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means,\n  On the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising,\n  There is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow,\n  Do you hear the officers giving their orders?\n  Do you hear the clank of the muskets?\n  Why what comes over you now old man?\n  Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively?\n  The troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles,\n  Around them at hand the well-drest friends and the women,\n  While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down,\n  Green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze,\n  O’er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between.\n\n  But drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters,\n  Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!\n\n  As wending the crowds now part and disperse--but we old man,\n  Not for nothing have I brought you hither--we must remain,\n  You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell.\n\n       [The Centenarian]\n  When I clutch’d your hand it was not with terror,\n  But suddenly pouring about me here on every side,\n  And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran,\n  And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see south and south-\n      east and south-west,\n  Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods,\n  And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over) came again and\n      suddenly raged,\n  As eighty-five years agone no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends,\n  But a battle which I took part in myself--aye, long ago as it is, I\n      took part in it,\n  Walking then this hilltop, this same ground.\n\n  Aye, this is the ground,\n  My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled from graves,\n  The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear,\n  Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted,\n  I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay,\n  I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes;\n  Here we lay encamp’d, it was this time in summer also.\n\n  As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration,\n  It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here,\n  By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held up\n      his unsheath’d sword,\n  It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army.\n\n  ’Twas a bold act then--the English war-ships had just arrived,\n  We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,\n  And the transports swarming with soldiers.\n\n  A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.\n\n  Twenty thousand were brought against us,\n  A veteran force furnish’d with good artillery.\n\n  I tell not now the whole of the battle,\n  But one brigade early in the forenoon order’d forward to engage the\n      red-coats,\n  Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d,\n  And how long and well it stood confronting death.\n\n  Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting death?\n  It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,\n  Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known personally\n      to the General.\n\n  Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters,\n  Till of a sudden unlook’d for by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night,\n  The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing\n      their guns,\n  That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy’s mercy.\n\n  The General watch’d them from this hill,\n  They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment,\n  Then drew close together, very comp
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Cavalry Crossing a Ford",
    "body": "  A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,\n  They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun--hark to\n      the musical clank,\n  Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop\n      to drink,\n  Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the\n      negligent rest on the saddles,\n  Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford--while,\n  Scarlet and blue and snowy white,\n  The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bivouac on a Mountain Side",
    "body": "  I see before me now a traveling army halting,\n  Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,\n  Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,\n  Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen,\n  The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the\n      mountain,\n  The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering,\n  And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,\n      breaking out, the eternal stars.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Army Corps on the March",
    "body": "  With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,\n  With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an\n      irregular volley,\n  The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,\n  Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover’d men,\n  In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,\n  With artillery interspers’d--the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,\n  As the army corps advances.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame",
    "body": "  By the bivouac’s fitful flame,\n  A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow--but\n      first I note,\n  The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,\n  The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,\n  Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,\n  The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily\n      watching me,)\n  While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,\n  Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that\n      are far away;\n  A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,\n  By the bivouac’s fitful flame.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Come Up from the Fields Father",
    "body": "  Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,\n  And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.\n\n  Lo, ’tis autumn,\n  Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,\n  Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the\n      moderate wind,\n  Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,\n  (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?\n  Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)\n\n  Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and\n      with wondrous clouds,\n  Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.\n\n  Down in the fields all prospers well,\n  But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call.\n  And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.\n\n  Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,\n  She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.\n\n  Open the envelope quickly,\n  O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,\n  O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!\n  All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main\n      words only,\n  Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,\n      taken to hospital,\n  At present low, but will soon be better.\n\n  Ah now the single figure to me,\n  Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,\n  Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,\n  By the jamb of a door leans.\n\n  Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through\n      her sobs,\n  The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)\n  See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.\n\n  Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be\n      better, that brave and simple soul,)\n  While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,\n  The only son is dead.\n\n  But the mother needs to be better,\n  She with thin form presently drest in black,\n  By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,\n  In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,\n  O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,\n  To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night",
    "body": "  Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;\n  When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,\n  One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I\n      shall never forget,\n  One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground,\n  Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle,\n  Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way,\n  Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of\n      responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)\n  Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the\n      moderate night-wind,\n  Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the\n      battlefield spreading,\n  Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,\n  But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed,\n  Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my\n      chin in my hands,\n  Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest\n      comrade--not a tear, not a word,\n  Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier,\n  As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,\n  Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,\n  I faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall\n      surely meet again,)\n  Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,\n  My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,\n  Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and\n      carefully under feet,\n  And there and then and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his\n      grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited,\n  Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-field dim,\n  Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,)\n  Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day\n      brighten’d,\n  I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,\n  And buried him where he fell.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown",
    "body": "  A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,\n  A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,\n  Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,\n  Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,\n  We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,\n  ’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital,\n  Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and\n      poems ever made,\n  Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,\n  And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and\n      clouds of smoke,\n  By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some\n      in the pews laid down,\n  At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of\n      bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)\n  I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)\n  Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,\n  Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity,\n      some of them dead,\n  Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether,\n      odor of blood,\n  The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,\n  Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the\n      death-spasm sweating,\n  An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,\n  The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of\n      the torches,\n  These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,\n  Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;\n  But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,\n  Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,\n  Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,\n  The unknown road still marching.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim",
    "body": "  A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,\n  As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,\n  As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,\n  Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,\n  Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,\n  Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.\n\n  Curious I halt and silent stand,\n  Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first\n      just lift the blanket;\n  Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair,\n      and flesh all sunken about the eyes?\n  Who are you my dear comrade?\n  Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling?\n  Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?\n  Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of\n      beautiful yellow-white ivory;\n  Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the\n      Christ himself,\n  Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods",
    "body": "  As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,\n  To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,)\n  I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;\n  Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could\n      understand,)\n  The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose--yet this sign left,\n  On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave,\n  Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.\n\n  Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,\n  Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,\n  Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or\n      in the crowded street,\n  Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes the inscription\n      rude in Virginia’s woods,\n  Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Not the Pilot",
    "body": "  Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port,\n      though beaten back and many times baffled;\n  Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,\n  By deserts parch’d, snows chill’d, rivers wet, perseveres till he\n      reaches his destination,\n  More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose\n      march for these States,\n  For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me",
    "body": "  Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!\n  Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,\n  A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me,\n  Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,\n  Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?\n  And sullen hymns of defeat?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wound-Dresser",
    "body": "       1\n  An old man bending I come among new faces,\n  Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,\n  Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me,\n  (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,\n  But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself,\n  To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;)\n  Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,\n  Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)\n  Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,\n  Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?\n  What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,\n  Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?\n\n       2\n  O maidens and young men I love and that love me,\n  What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls,\n  Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust,\n  In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the\n      rush of successful charge,\n  Enter the captur’d works--yet lo, like a swift-running river they fade,\n  Pass and are gone they fade--I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or\n      soldiers’ joys,\n  (Both I remember well--many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)\n\n  But in silence, in dreams’ projections,\n  While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,\n  So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,\n  With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,\n  Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)\n\n  Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,\n  Straight and swift to my wounded I go,\n  Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,\n  Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,\n  Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,\n  To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,\n  To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,\n  An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,\n  Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.\n\n  I onward go, I stop,\n  With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,\n  I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,\n  One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you,\n  Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that\n      would save you.\n\n       3\n  On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)\n  The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)\n  The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine,\n  Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life\n      struggles hard,\n  (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!\n  In mercy come quickly.)\n\n  From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,\n  I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,\n  Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,\n  His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the\n      bloody stump,\n  And has not yet look’d on it.\n\n  I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,\n  But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,\n  And the yellow-blue countenance see.\n\n  I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,\n  Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening,\n      so offensive,\n  While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.\n\n  I am faithful, I do not give out,\n  The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,\n  These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast\n      a fire, a burning flame.)\n\n       4\n  Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,\n  Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,\n  The hurt and wounded I pacify with sooth
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Long, Too Long America",
    "body": "  Long, too long America,\n  Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and\n      prosperity only,\n  But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,\n      grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,\n  And now to conceive and show to the world what your children\n      en-masse really are,\n  (For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse\n      really are?)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun",
    "body": "       1\n  Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,\n  Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,\n  Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,\n  Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,\n  Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching\n      content,\n  Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the\n      Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,\n  Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can\n      walk undisturb’d,\n  Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire,\n  Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the\n      world a rural domestic life,\n  Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,\n  Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal\n      sanities!\n\n  These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and\n      rack’d by the war-strife,)\n  These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,\n  While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,\n  Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,\n  Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up,\n  Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever faces;\n  (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,\n  see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)\n\n       2\n  Keep your splendid silent sun,\n  Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,\n  Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,\n  Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;\n  Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and\n      endless along the trottoirs!\n  Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and\n      lovers by the thousand!\n  Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand every day!\n  Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!\n  Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of\n      the trumpets and drums!\n  (The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flush’d\n      and reckless,\n  Some, their time up, returning with thinn’d ranks, young, yet very\n      old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)\n  Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!\n  O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!\n  The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!\n  The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the\n      torchlight procession!\n  The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons\n      following;\n  People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,\n  Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,\n  The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even\n      the sight of the wounded,)\n  Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!\n  Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Dirge for Two Veterans",
    "body": "       The last sunbeam\n  Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,\n  On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,\n       Down a new-made double grave.\n\n       Lo, the moon ascending,\n  Up from the east the silvery round moon,\n  Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,\n       Immense and silent moon.\n\n       I see a sad procession,\n  And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles,\n  All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,\n       As with voices and with tears.\n\n       I hear the great drums pounding,\n  And the small drums steady whirring,\n  And every blow of the great convulsive drums,\n       Strikes me through and through.\n\n       For the son is brought with the father,\n  (In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,\n  Two veterans son and father dropt together,\n       And the double grave awaits them.)\n\n       Now nearer blow the bugles,\n  And the drums strike more convulsive,\n  And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,\n       And the strong dead-march enwraps me.\n\n       In the eastern sky up-buoying,\n  The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d,\n  (’Tis some mother’s large transparent face,\n       In heaven brighter growing.)\n\n       O strong dead-march you please me!\n  O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!\n  O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!\n       What I have I also give you.\n\n       The moon gives you light,\n  And the bugles and the drums give you music,\n  And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,\n       My heart gives you love.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice",
    "body": "  Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,\n  Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,\n  Those who love each other shall become invincible,\n  They shall yet make Columbia victorious.\n\n  Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,\n  You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.\n\n  No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,\n  If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.\n\n  One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade,\n  From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall\n      be friends triune,\n  More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.\n\n  To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come,\n  Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.\n\n  It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection,\n  The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,\n  The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,\n  The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.\n\n  These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,\n  I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.\n\n  (Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?\n  Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?\n  Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Saw Old General at Bay",
    "body": "  I saw old General at bay,\n  (Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,)\n  His small force was now completely hemm’d in, in his works,\n  He call’d for volunteers to run the enemy’s lines, a desperate emergency,\n  I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or three\n      were selected,\n  I saw them receive their orders aside, they listen’d with care, the\n      adjutant was very grave,\n  I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Artilleryman’s Vision",
    "body": "  While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,\n  And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,\n  And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the\n      breath of my infant,\n  There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;\n  The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,\n  The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the\n      irregular snap! snap!\n  I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t!\n      of the rifle-balls,\n  I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the\n      great shells shrieking as they pass,\n  The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,\n      (tumultuous now the contest rages,)\n  All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,\n  The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,\n  The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of\n      the right time,\n  After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the effect;\n  Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel\n      leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)\n  I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay,)\n  I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low\n      concealing all;\n  Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side,\n  Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and\n      orders of officers,\n  While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears\n      a shout of applause, (some special success,)\n  And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in\n      dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the\n      depths of my soul,)\n  And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,\n      cavalry, moving hither and thither,\n  (The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red\n      heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)\n  Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full run,\n  With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles,\n      (these in my vision I hear or see,)\n  And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors",
    "body": "  Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,\n  With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?\n  Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?\n\n  (’Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,\n  Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,\n  As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)\n\n  Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder’d,\n  A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,\n  Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.\n\n  No further does she say, but lingering all the day,\n  Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,\n  And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.\n\n  What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?\n  Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?\n  Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Not Youth Pertains to Me",
    "body": "  Not youth pertains to me,\n  Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,\n  Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,\n  In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning\n      inures not to me,\n  Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me--yet there are two or three things\n      inure to me,\n  I have nourish’d the wounded and sooth’d many a dying soldier,\n  And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,\n  Composed these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Race of Veterans",
    "body": "  Race of veterans--race of victors!\n  Race of the soil, ready for conflict--race of the conquering march!\n  (No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,)\n  Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,\n  Race of passion and the storm.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "World Take Good Notice",
    "body": "  World take good notice, silver stars fading,\n  Milky hue ript, wet of white detaching,\n  Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,\n  Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,\n  Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy",
    "body": "  O tan-faced prairie-boy,\n  Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,\n  Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among\n      the recruits,\n  You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but look’d on each other,\n  When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Look Down Fair Moon",
    "body": "  Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,\n  Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple,\n  On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,\n  Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Reconciliation",
    "body": "  Word over all, beautiful as the sky,\n  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be\n      utterly lost,\n  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly\n      wash again, and ever again, this solid world;\n  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,\n  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I draw near,\n  Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]",
    "body": "  How solemn as one by one,\n  As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where stand,\n  As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the masks,\n  (As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,\n      whoever you are,)\n  How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks,\n      and to you,\n  I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,\n  O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,\n  Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;\n  The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,\n  Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,\n  Nor the bayonet stab O friend.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado",
    "body": "  As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,\n  The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air\n      I resume,\n  I know I am restless and make others so,\n  I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,\n  For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to\n      unsettle them,\n  I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have\n      been had all accepted me,\n  I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,\n      majorities, nor ridicule,\n  And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,\n  And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;\n  Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still\n      urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,\n  Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Delicate Cluster",
    "body": "  Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!\n  Covering all my lands--all my seashores lining!\n  Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing!\n  How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)\n  Flag cerulean--sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!\n  Ah my silvery beauty--ah my woolly white and crimson!\n  Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!\n  My sacred one, my mother.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Certain Civilian",
    "body": "  Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?\n  Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?\n  Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?\n  Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand--nor\n      am I now;\n  (I have been born of the same as the war was born,\n  The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the\n      martial dirge,\n  With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s funeral;)\n  What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,\n  And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,\n  For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lo, Victress on the Peaks",
    "body": "  Lo, Victress on the peaks,\n  Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,\n  (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)\n  Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all,\n  Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,\n  Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom--lo, in\n      these hours supreme,\n  No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous verse,\n  But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping wounds,\n  And psalms of the dead.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]",
    "body": "  Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!\n  Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;\n  Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering\n      pressing,)\n  Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene--electric spirit,\n  That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a\n      tireless phantom flitted,\n  Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum,\n  Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,\n      reverberates round me,\n  As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,\n  As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,\n  As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,\n  As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the\n      distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,\n  Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left,\n  Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;\n  Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day,\n  Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,\n  Leave me your pulses of rage--bequeath them to me--fill me with\n      currents convulsive,\n  Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,\n  Let them identify you to the future in these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Adieu to a Soldier",
    "body": "  Adieu O soldier,\n  You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)\n  The rapid march, the life of the camp,\n  The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manœuvre,\n  Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game,\n  Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you\n      and like of you all fill’d,\n  With war and war’s expression.\n\n  Adieu dear comrade,\n  Your mission is fulfill’d--but I, more warlike,\n  Myself and this contentious soul of mine,\n  Still on our own campaigning bound,\n  Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,\n  Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,\n  Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here,\n  To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Turn O Libertad",
    "body": "  Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,\n  From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute,\n      sweeping the world,\n  Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,\n  From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,\n  From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste,\n  Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come--give up that\n      backward world,\n  Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,\n  But what remains remains for singers for you--wars to come are for you,\n  (Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars\n      of the present also inure;)\n  Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad--turn your undying face,\n  To where the future, greater than all the past,\n  Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod",
    "body": "  To the leaven’d soil they trod calling I sing for the last,\n  (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,)\n  In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits\n      and vistas again to peace restored,\n  To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the\n      South and the North,\n  To the leaven’d soil of the general Western world to attest my songs,\n  To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,\n  To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,\n  To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide,\n  To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air;\n  And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)\n  The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely,\n  The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son,\n  The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end,\n  But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d",
    "body": "       1\n  When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,\n  And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,\n  I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.\n\n  Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,\n  Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,\n  And thought of him I love.\n\n       2\n  O powerful western fallen star!\n  O shades of night--O moody, tearful night!\n  O great star disappear’d--O the black murk that hides the star!\n  O cruel hands that hold me powerless--O helpless soul of me!\n  O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.\n\n\n      3\n  In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,\n  Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,\n  With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,\n  With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the dooryard,\n  With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,\n  A sprig with its flower I break.\n\n       4\n  In the swamp in secluded recesses,\n  A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.\n\n  Solitary the thrush,\n  The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,\n  Sings by himself a song.\n\n  Song of the bleeding throat,\n  Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,\n  If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.)\n\n       5\n  Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,\n  Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d\n      from the ground, spotting the gray debris,\n  Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the\n      endless grass,\n  Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the\n      dark-brown fields uprisen,\n  Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,\n  Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,\n  Night and day journeys a coffin.\n\n       6\n  Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,\n  Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,\n  With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,\n  With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,\n  With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,\n  With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the\n      unbared heads,\n  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,\n  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong\n      and solemn,\n  With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,\n  The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--where amid these\n      you journey,\n  With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,\n  Here, coffin that slowly passes,\n  I give you my sprig of lilac.\n\n       7\n  (Nor for you, for one alone,\n  Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,\n  For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane\n      and sacred death.\n\n  All over bouquets of roses,\n  O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,\n  But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,\n  Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,\n  With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,\n  For you and the coffins all of you O death.)\n\n       8\n  O western orb sailing the heaven,\n  Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,\n  As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,\n  As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,\n  As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the\n      other stars all look’d on,)\n  As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not\n      what kept me from sleep,)\n  As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you\n      were of woe,\n  As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,\n  As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black\n      of the night,\n 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Captain! My Captain!",
    "body": "  O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,\n  The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,\n  The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,\n  While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;\n      But O heart! heart! heart!\n       O the bleeding drops of red,\n         Where on the deck my Captain lies,\n           Fallen cold and dead.\n\n  O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;\n  Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,\n  For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,\n  For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;\n      Here Captain! dear father!\n       This arm beneath your head!\n         It is some dream that on the deck,\n           You’ve fallen cold and dead.\n\n  My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,\n  My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,\n  The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,\n  From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;\n       Exult O shores, and ring O bells!\n         But I with mournful tread,\n           Walk the deck my Captain lies,\n             Fallen cold and dead.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865",
    "body": "  Hush’d be the camps to-day,\n  And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,\n  And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,\n  Our dear commander’s death.\n\n  No more for him life’s stormy conflicts,\n  Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time’s dark events,\n  Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.\n  But sing poet in our name,\n\n  Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.\n\n  As they invault the coffin there,\n  Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,\n  For the heavy hearts of soldiers.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "This Dust Was Once the Man",
    "body": "  This dust was once the man,\n  Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,\n  Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,\n  Was saved the Union of these States.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "By Blue Ontario’s Shore",
    "body": "  By blue Ontario’s shore,\n  As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the\n      dead that return no more,\n  A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,\n  Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,\n      chant me the carol of victory,\n  And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,\n  And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.\n\n  (Democracy, the destin’d conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,\n  And death and infidelity at every step.)\n\n       2\n  A Nation announcing itself,\n  I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,\n  I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.\n\n  A breed whose proof is in time and deeds,\n  What we are we are, nativity is answer enough to objections,\n  We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,\n  We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,\n  We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of\n      ourselves,\n  We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves,\n  We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world,\n  From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.\n\n  Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,\n  Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or\n      sinful in ourselves only.\n\n  (O Mother--O Sisters dear!\n  If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us,\n  It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)\n\n       3\n  Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?\n  There can be any number of supremes--one does not countervail\n      another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or\n      one life countervails another.\n\n  All is eligible to all,\n  All is for individuals, all is for you,\n  No condition is prohibited, not God’s or any.\n\n  All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.\n\n  Produce great Persons, the rest follows.\n\n       4\n  Piety and conformity to them that like,\n  Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,\n  I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,\n  Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!\n\n  I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every\n      one I meet,\n  Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?\n  Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?\n\n  (With pangs and cries as thine own O bearer of many children,\n  These clamors wild to a race of pride I give.)\n\n  O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before?\n  If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.\n\n  Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse,\n  Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey--juice,\n  Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,\n  Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.\n\n       5\n  Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,\n  America brings builders, and brings its own styles.\n\n  The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work and\n      pass’d to other spheres,\n  A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.\n\n  America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all\n      hazards,\n  Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use\n      of precedents,\n  Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under\n      their forms,\n  Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne\n      from the house,\n  Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was\n      fittest for its days,\n  That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who\n      approaches,\n  And that he shall be fittest for his days.\n\n  Any period one nation must lead,\n  One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.\n\n  These States are the amplest poem,\n  Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,\n  Here the doings of men correspond with th
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Reversals",
    "body": "  Let that which stood in front go behind,\n  Let that which was behind advance to the front,\n  Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions,\n  Let the old propositions be postponed,\n  Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself,\n  Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As Consequent, Etc.",
    "body": "  As consequent from store of summer rains,\n  Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,\n  Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations,\n  Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,\n  Songs of continued years I sing.\n\n  Life’s ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend,\n  With the old streams of death.)\n\n  Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods,\n  Some down Colorado’s canons from sources of perpetual snow,\n  Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,\n  Some in the north finding their way to Erie, Niagara, Ottawa,\n  Some to Atlantica’s bays, and so to the great salt brine.\n\n  In you whoe’er you are my book perusing,\n  In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing,\n  All, all toward the mystic ocean tending.\n\n  Currents for starting a continent new,\n  Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,\n  Fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves,\n  (Not safe and peaceful only, waves rous’d and ominous too,\n  Out of the depths the storm’s abysmic waves, who knows whence?\n  Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter’d sail.)\n\n  Or from the sea of Time, collecting vasting all, I bring,\n  A windrow-drift of weeds and shells.\n\n  O little shells, so curious-convolute, so limpid-cold and voiceless,\n  Will you not little shells to the tympans of temples held,\n  Murmurs and echoes still call up, eternity’s music faint and far,\n  Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim, strains for the soul of\n      the prairies,\n  Whisper’d reverberations, chords for the ear of the West joyously sounding,\n  Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable,\n  Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life,\n  (For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give,)\n  These waifs from the deep, cast high and dry,\n  Wash’d on America’s shores?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Return of the Heroes",
    "body": "       1\n  For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself,\n  Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,\n  Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,\n  Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,\n  Turning a verse for thee.\n\n  O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,\n  O harvest of my lands--O boundless summer growths,\n  O lavish brown parturient earth--O infinite teeming womb,\n  A song to narrate thee.\n\n       2\n  Ever upon this stage,\n  Is acted God’s calm annual drama,\n  Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,\n  Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,\n  The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,\n  The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,\n  The liliput countless armies of the grass,\n  The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,\n  The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,\n  The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the\n      silvery fringes,\n  The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,\n  The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,\n  The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.\n\n       3\n  Fecund America--today,\n  Thou art all over set in births and joys!\n  Thou groan’st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing-garment,\n  Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,\n  A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne,\n  As some huge ship freighted to water’s edge thou ridest into port,\n  As rain falls from the heaven and vapors rise from earth, so have\n      the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of thee;\n  Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!\n  Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,\n  Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,\n  Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon\n      thy world, and lookest East and lookest West,\n  Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million\n      farms, and missest nothing,\n  Thou all-acceptress--thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as\n      God is hospitable.)\n\n       4\n  When late I sang sad was my voice,\n  Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and\n      smoke of war;\n  In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,\n  Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying.\n\n  But now I sing not war,\n  Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,\n  Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle;\n  No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.\n\n  Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies?\n  Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow’d.\n\n  (Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs,\n  With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets;\n  How elate I stood and watch’d you, where starting off you march’d.\n\n  Pass--then rattle drums again,\n  For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,\n  Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,\n  O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever,\n  O my land’s maim’d darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and\n      the crutch,\n  Lo, your pallid army follows.)\n\n       5\n  But on these days of brightness,\n  On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes the\n      high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,\n  Should the dead intrude?\n\n  Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,\n  They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,\n  And along the edge of the sky in the horizon’s far margin.\n\n  Nor do I forget you Departed,\n  Nor in winter or summer my lost ones,\n  But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace,\n      like pleasing phantoms,\n  Your memories rising glide silently by me.\n\n       6\n  I saw the day the return of the heroes,\n  (Yet the heroes never surpass’d shall never 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "There Was a Child Went Forth",
    "body": "  There was a child went forth every day,\n  And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,\n  And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,\n  Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.\n\n  The early lilacs became part of this child,\n  And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red\n      clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,\n  And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the\n      mare’s foal and the cow’s calf,\n  And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,\n  And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the\n      beautiful curious liquid,\n  And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.\n\n  The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,\n  Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the\n      esculent roots of the garden,\n  And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms and the fruit afterward,\n      and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,\n  And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the\n      tavern whence he had lately risen,\n  And the schoolmistress that pass’d on her way to the school,\n  And the friendly boys that pass’d, and the quarrelsome boys,\n  And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,\n  And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.\n\n  His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had conceiv’d\n      him in her womb and birth’d him,\n  They gave this child more of themselves than that,\n  They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.\n\n  The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,\n  The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome\n      odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,\n  The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust,\n  The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,\n  The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the\n      yearning and swelling heart,\n  Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the\n      thought if after all it should prove unreal,\n  The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious\n      whether and how,\n  Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?\n  Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes\n      and specks what are they?\n  The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,\n  Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves, the huge crossing at\n      the ferries,\n  The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,\n  Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of\n      white or brown two miles off,\n  The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little\n      boat slack-tow’d astern,\n  The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,\n  The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away\n      solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,\n  The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh\n      and shore mud,\n  These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who\n      now goes, and will always go forth every day.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Ireland",
    "body": "  Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,\n  Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,\n  Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground,\n  Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders,\n  At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,\n  Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,\n  Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.\n\n  Yet a word ancient mother,\n  You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead\n      between your knees,\n  O you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair so dishevel’d,\n  For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,\n  It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,\n  The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country,\n  Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,\n  What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave,\n  The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it,\n  And now with rosy and new blood,\n  Moves to-day in a new country.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The City Dead-House",
    "body": "  By the city dead-house by the gate,\n  As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,\n  I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought,\n  Her corpse they deposit unclaim’d, it lies on the damp brick pavement,\n  The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it alone,\n  That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice not,\n  Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odors\n      morbific impress me,\n  But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house\n      --that ruin!\n  That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever built!\n  Or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted, or all the\n      old high-spired cathedrals,\n  That little house alone more than them all--poor, desperate house!\n  Fair, fearful wreck--tenement of a soul--itself a soul,\n  Unclaim’d, avoided house--take one breath from my tremulous lips,\n  Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,\n  Dead house of love--house of madness and sin, crumbled, crush’d,\n  House of life, erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house,\n      dead even then,\n  Months, years, an echoing, garnish’d house--but dead, dead, dead.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "This Compost",
    "body": "       1\n  Something startles me where I thought I was safest,\n  I withdraw from the still woods I loved,\n  I will not go now on the pastures to walk,\n  I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,\n  I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.\n\n  O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?\n  How can you be alive you growths of spring?\n  How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?\n  Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?\n  Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?\n\n  Where have you disposed of their carcasses?\n  Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?\n  Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?\n  I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d,\n  I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through\n      the sod and turn it up underneath,\n  I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.\n\n       2\n  Behold this compost! behold it well!\n  Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person--yet behold!\n  The grass of spring covers the prairies,\n  The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,\n  The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,\n  The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,\n  The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,\n  The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,\n  The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on\n      their nests,\n  The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,\n  The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the\n      colt from the mare,\n  Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,\n  Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in\n      the dooryards,\n  The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata\n      of sour dead.\n\n  What chemistry!\n  That the winds are really not infectious,\n  That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which\n      is so amorous after me,\n  That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,\n  That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited\n      themselves in it,\n  That all is clean forever and forever,\n  That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,\n  That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,\n  That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that\n      melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,\n  That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,\n  Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once\n      catching disease.\n\n  Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,\n  It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,\n  It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless\n      successions of diseas’d corpses,\n  It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,\n  It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,\n  It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings\n      from them at last.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire",
    "body": "  Courage yet, my brother or my sister!\n  Keep on--Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;\n  That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any\n      number of failures,\n  Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any\n      unfaithfulness,\n  Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.\n\n  What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,\n  Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is\n      positive and composed, knows no discouragement,\n  Waiting patiently, waiting its time.\n\n  (Not songs of loyalty alone are these,\n  But songs of insurrection also,\n  For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,\n  And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,\n  And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)\n\n  The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,\n  The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,\n  The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and\n      leadballs do their work,\n  The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,\n  The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,\n  The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,\n  The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;\n  But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the\n      infidel enter’d into full possession.\n\n  When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the\n      second or third to go,\n  It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.\n\n  When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,\n  And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged\n      from any part of the earth,\n  Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from\n      that part of the earth,\n  And the infidel come into full possession.\n\n  Then courage European revolter, revoltress!\n  For till all ceases neither must you cease.\n\n  I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself,\n      nor what any thing is for,)\n  But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,\n  In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment--for they too are great.\n\n  Did we think victory great?\n  So it is--but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that\n      defeat is great,\n  And that death and dismay are great.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Unnamed Land",
    "body": "  Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten\n      thousand years before these States,\n  Garner’d clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and\n      travel’d their course and pass’d on,\n  What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes\n      and nomads,\n  What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,\n  What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,\n  What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,\n  What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death\n      and the soul,\n  Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and\n      undevelop’d,\n  Not a mark, not a record remains--and yet all remains.\n\n  O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more\n      than we are for nothing,\n  I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much\n      as we now belong to it.\n\n  Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,\n  Some with oval countenances learn’d and calm,\n  Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,\n  Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,\n  Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,\n      laboring, reaping, filling barns,\n  Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,\n      libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.\n  Are those billions of men really gone?\n  Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?\n  Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?\n  Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?\n\n  I believe of all those men and women that fill’d the unnamed lands,\n      every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.\n  In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of\n      what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn’d, in life.\n\n  I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of\n      them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;\n  Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,\n      games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,\n  I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,\n      counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,\n  I suspect I shall meet them there,\n  I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song of Prudence",
    "body": "  Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering,\n  On Time, Space, Reality--on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence.\n\n  The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence,\n  Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that\n      suits immortality.\n\n  The soul is of itself,\n  All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,\n  All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,\n  Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day,\n      month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death,\n  But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the\n      indirect lifetime.\n\n  The indirect is just as much as the direct,\n  The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the\n      body, if not more.\n\n  Not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of\n      the onanist,\n  Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning,\n      betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,\n  But has results beyond death as really as before death.\n\n  Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing.\n\n  No specification is necessary, all that a male or female does, that\n      is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her,\n  In the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope\n      of it forever.\n\n  Who has been wise receives interest,\n  Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat,\n      young, old, it is the same,\n  The interest will come round--all will come round.\n\n  Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect,\n      all of the past and all of the present and all of the future,\n  All the brave actions of war and peace,\n  All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful,\n      young children, widows, the sick, and to shunn’d persons,\n  All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw\n      others fill the seats of the boats,\n  All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a\n      friend’s sake, or opinion’s sake,\n  All pains of enthusiasts scoff’d at by their neighbors,\n  All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,\n  All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded,\n  All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,\n  All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name,\n      date, location,\n  All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,\n  All suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of his\n      mouth, or the shaping of his great hands,\n  All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe,\n      or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix’d stars,\n      by those there as we are here,\n  All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are,\n      or by any one,\n  These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which\n      they sprang, or shall spring.\n\n  Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?\n  The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,\n  No consummation exists without being from some long previous\n      consummation, and that from some other,\n  Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the\n      beginning than any.\n\n  Whatever satisfies souls is true;\n  Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,\n  Itself only finally satisfies the soul,\n  The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson\n      but its own.\n\n  Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time,\n      space, reality,\n  That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.\n\n  What is prudence is indivisible,\n  Declines to separate one part of life from every part,\n  Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead,\n  Matches every thought or act by its correlative,\n  Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,\n  Knows tha
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Singer in the Prison",
    "body": "          O sight of pity, shame and dole!\n          O fearful thought--a convict soul.\n\n       1\n  Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison,\n  Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,\n  Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pensive sweet and strong the\n      like whereof was never heard,\n  Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed guards, who ceas’d their pacing,\n  Making the hearer’s pulses stop for ecstasy and awe.\n\n       2\n  The sun was low in the west one winter day,\n  When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,\n  (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily counterfeiters,\n  Gather’d to Sunday church in prison walls, the keepers round,\n  Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)\n  Calmly a lady walk’d holding a little innocent child by either hand,\n  Whom seating on their stools beside her on the platform,\n  She, first preluding with the instrument a low and musical prelude,\n  In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.\n\n       A soul confined by bars and bands,\n       Cries, help! O help! and wrings her hands,\n       Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast,\n       Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.\n\n       Ceaseless she paces to and fro,\n       O heart-sick days! O nights of woe!\n       Nor hand of friend, nor loving face,\n       Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.\n\n       It was not I that sinn’d the sin,\n       The ruthless body dragg’d me in;\n       Though long I strove courageously,\n       The body was too much for me.\n\n       Dear prison’d soul bear up a space,\n       For soon or late the certain grace;\n       To set thee free and bear thee home,\n       The heavenly pardoner death shall come.\n\n          Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole!\n          Depart--a God-enfranchis’d soul!\n\n       3\n  The singer ceas’d,\n  One glance swept from her clear calm eyes o’er all those upturn’d faces,\n  Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand varied, crafty, brutal,\n      seam’d and beauteous faces,\n  Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,\n  While her gown touch’d them rustling in the silence,\n  She vanish’d with her children in the dusk.\n\n  While upon all, convicts and armed keepers ere they stirr’d,\n  (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)\n  A hush and pause fell down a wondrous minute,\n  With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of bad men bow’d and moved to weeping,\n  And youth’s convulsive breathings, memories of home,\n  The mother’s voice in lullaby, the sister’s care, the happy childhood,\n  The long-pent spirit rous’d to reminiscence;\n  A wondrous minute then--but after in the solitary night, to many,\n      many there,\n  Years after, even in the hour of death, the sad refrain, the tune,\n      the voice, the words,\n  Resumed, the large calm lady walks the narrow aisle,\n  The wailing melody again, the singer in the prison sings,\n\n       O sight of pity, shame and dole!\n       O fearful thought--a convict soul.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Warble for Lilac-Time",
    "body": "  Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)\n  Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature’s sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,\n  Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)\n  Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,\n  Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,\n  Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his\n      golden wings,\n  The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,\n  Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,\n  All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,\n  The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,\n  The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,\n  With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,\n  Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest\n      of his mate,\n  The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,\n  For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it\n      and from it?\n  Thou, soul, unloosen’d--the restlessness after I know not what;\n  Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!\n  O if one could but fly like a bird!\n  O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!\n  To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters;\n  Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the\n      morning drops of dew,\n  The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,\n  Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,\n  Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,\n  To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds,\n  A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]",
    "body": "       1\n  What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?\n  What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?\n  The life thou lived’st we know not,\n  But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of\n      brokers,\n  Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.\n\n       2\n  Silent, my soul,\n  With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d,\n  Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.\n\n  While through the interior vistas,\n  Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)\n  Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes,\n  Spiritual projections.\n\n  In one, among the city streets a laborer’s home appear’d,\n  After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,\n  The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove.\n\n  In one, the sacred parturition scene,\n  A happy painless mother birth’d a perfect child.\n\n  In one, at a bounteous morning meal,\n  Sat peaceful parents with contented sons.\n\n  In one, by twos and threes, young people,\n  Hundreds concentring, walk’d the paths and streets and roads,\n  Toward a tall-domed school.\n\n  In one a trio beautiful,\n  Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter’s daughter, sat,\n  Chatting and sewing.\n\n  In one, along a suite of noble rooms,\n  ’Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,\n  Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old,\n  Reading, conversing.\n\n  All, all the shows of laboring life,\n  City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s,\n  Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy,\n  Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room,\n  Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college,\n  The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught,\n  The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father’d and mother’d,\n  The hungry fed, the houseless housed;\n  (The intentions perfect and divine,\n  The workings, details, haply human.)\n\n       3\n  O thou within this tomb,\n  From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,\n  Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,\n  Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.\n\n  Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,\n  By you, your banks Connecticut,\n  By you and all your teeming life old Thames,\n  By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco,\n  You Hudson, you endless Mississippi--nor you alone,\n  But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]",
    "body": "       1\n  Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,\n  These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,\n  This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for\n      you, in each for each,\n  (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears--0 heaven!\n  The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)\n  This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,\n  This film of Satan’s seething pit,\n  This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this\n      soundless sea;\n  Out from the convolutions of this globe,\n  This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,\n  This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,\n  Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)\n  These burin’d eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,\n  To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate,\n  To you whoe’er you are--a look.\n\n       2\n  A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,\n  Of youth long sped and middle age declining,\n  (As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,\n  Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)\n  Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,\n  As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open’d window,\n  Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,\n  To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,\n  Then travel travel on.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Vocalism",
    "body": "       1\n  Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine\n      power to speak words;\n  Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous\n      practice? from physique?\n  Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?\n  Come duly to the divine power to speak words?\n  For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,\n      procreation, prudence, and nakedness,\n  After treading ground and breasting river and lake,\n  After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,\n      after knowledge, freedom, crimes,\n  After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing\n      obstructions,\n  After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,\n      woman, the divine power to speak words;\n  Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all--none\n      refuse, all attend,\n  Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities,\n      hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in\n      close ranks,\n  They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the\n      mouth of that man or that woman.\n\n       2\n  O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?\n  Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,\n  As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere\n      around the globe.\n\n  All waits for the right voices;\n  Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? where is the develop’d soul?\n  For I see every word utter’d thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,\n      impossible on less terms.\n\n  I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,\n  Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,\n  Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies\n      slumbering forever ready in all words.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Him That Was Crucified",
    "body": "  My spirit to yours dear brother,\n  Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you,\n  I do not sound your name, but I understand you,\n  I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute\n      those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,\n  That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession,\n  We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,\n  We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies,\n  Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,\n  We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the\n      disputers nor any thing that is asserted,\n  We hear the bawling and din, we are reach’d at by divisions,\n      jealousies, recriminations on every side,\n  They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,\n  Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and\n      down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,\n  Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races,\n      ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "You Felons on Trial in Courts",
    "body": "  You felons on trial in courts,\n  You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and\n      handcuff’d with iron,\n  Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?\n  Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with\n      iron, or my ankles with iron?\n\n  You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms,\n  Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?\n\n  O culpable! I acknowledge--I expose!\n  (O admirers, praise not me--compliment not me--you make me wince,\n  I see what you do not--I know what you do not.)\n\n  Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,\n  Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run,\n  Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,\n  I walk with delinquents with passionate love,\n  I feel I am of them--I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,\n  And henceforth I will not deny them--for how can I deny myself?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Laws for Creations",
    "body": "  Laws for creations,\n  For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and\n      perfect literats for America,\n  For noble savans and coming musicians.\n  All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the\n      compact truth of the world,\n  There shall be no subject too pronounced--all works shall illustrate\n      the divine law of indirections.\n\n  What do you suppose creation is?\n  What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and\n      own no superior?\n  What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but\n      that man or woman is as good as God?\n  And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?\n  And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?\n  And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Common Prostitute",
    "body": "  Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and\n      lusty as Nature,\n  Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,\n  Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to\n      rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.\n\n  My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you\n      make preparation to be worthy to meet me,\n  And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.\n\n  Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "I Was Looking a Long While",
    "body": "  I was looking a long while for Intentions,\n  For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these\n      chants--and now I have found it,\n  It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither\n      accept nor reject,)\n  It is no more in the legends than in all else,\n  It is in the present--it is this earth to-day,\n  It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,)\n  It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of to-day,\n  It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,\n  It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,\n      politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,\n  All for the modern--all for the average man of to-day.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thought",
    "body": "  Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,\n      scholarships, and the like;\n  (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them,\n      except as it results to their bodies and souls,\n  So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,\n  And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,\n  And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the\n      rotten excrement of maggots,\n  And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true\n      realities of life, and go toward false realities,\n  And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them,\n      but nothing more,\n  And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Miracles",
    "body": "  Why, who makes much of a miracle?\n  As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,\n  Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,\n  Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,\n  Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,\n  Or stand under trees in the woods,\n  Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night\n      with any one I love,\n  Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,\n  Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,\n  Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,\n  Or animals feeding in the fields,\n  Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,\n  Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet\n      and bright,\n  Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;\n  These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,\n  The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.\n\n  To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,\n  Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,\n  Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,\n  Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.\n  To me the sea is a continual miracle,\n  The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the\n      ships with men in them,\n  What stranger miracles are there?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sparkles from the Wheel",
    "body": "  Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,\n  Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them.\n\n  By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,\n  A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,\n  Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,\n  With measur’d tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but\n      firm hand,\n  Forth issue then in copious golden jets,\n  Sparkles from the wheel.\n\n  The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,\n  The sad sharp-chinn’d old man with worn clothes and broad\n      shoulder-band of leather,\n  Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here\n      absorb’d and arrested,\n  The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)\n  The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets,\n  The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press’d blade,\n  Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,\n  Sparkles from the wheel.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Pupil",
    "body": "  Is reform needed? is it through you?\n  The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need\n      to accomplish it.\n\n  You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,\n      complexion, clean and sweet?\n  Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that\n      when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command\n      enters with you, and every one is impress’d with your Personality?\n\n  O the magnet! the flesh over and over!\n  Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to\n      inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,\n      elevatedness,\n  Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Unfolded out of the Folds",
    "body": "  Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is\n      always to come unfolded,\n  Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the\n      superbest man of the earth,\n  Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,\n  Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be\n      form’d of perfect body,\n  Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the\n      poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)\n  Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence\n      can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,\n  Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman\n      love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,\n  Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds\n      of the man’s brain, duly obedient,\n  Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,\n  Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;\n  A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but\n      every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;\n  First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "What Am I After All",
    "body": "  What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own\n      name? repeating it over and over;\n  I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.\n\n  To you your name also;\n  Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in\n      the sound of your name?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Kosmos",
    "body": "  Who includes diversity and is Nature,\n  Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of\n      the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also,\n  Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing,\n      or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,\n  Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,\n  Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,\n      spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual,\n  Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good,\n  Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body\n      understands by subtle analogies all other theories,\n  The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;\n  Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in\n      other globes with their suns and moons,\n  Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day\n      but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,\n  The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Others May Praise What They Like",
    "body": "  Others may praise what they like;\n  But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art\n      or aught else,\n  Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the\n      western prairie-scent,\n  And exudes it all again.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?",
    "body": "  Who learns my lesson complete?\n  Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,\n  The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,\n      clerk, porter and customer,\n  Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy--draw nigh and commence;\n  It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,\n  And that to another, and every one to another still.\n\n  The great laws take and effuse without argument,\n  I am of the same style, for I am their friend,\n  I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.\n\n  I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons\n      of things,\n  They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.\n\n  I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--\n      it is very wonderful.\n\n  It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so\n      exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or\n      the untruth of a single second,\n  I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,\n      nor ten billions of years,\n  Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans\n      and builds a house.\n\n  I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,\n  Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,\n  Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.\n\n  Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;\n  I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and\n      how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,\n  And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of\n      summers and winters to articulate and walk--all this is\n      equally wonderful.\n\n  And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other\n      without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see\n      each other, is every bit as wonderful.\n\n  And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,\n  And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to\n      be true, is just as wonderful.\n\n  And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is\n      equally wonderful,\n  And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally\n      wonderful.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Tests",
    "body": "  All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to\n      analysis in the soul,\n  Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,\n  They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,\n  They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves,\n      and touches themselves;\n  For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far\n      and near without one exception.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Torch",
    "body": "  On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen’s group\n      stands watching,\n  Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon,\n  The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,\n  Bearing a torch ablaze at the prow.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Star of France [1870-71]",
    "body": "  O star of France,\n  The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,\n  Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,\n  Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk,\n  And ’mid its teeming madden’d half-drown’d crowds,\n  Nor helm nor helmsman.\n\n  Dim smitten star,\n  Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,\n  The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty,\n  Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast’s dreams of brotherhood,\n  Of terror to the tyrant and the priest.\n\n  Star crucified--by traitors sold,\n  Star panting o’er a land of death, heroic land,\n  Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land.\n\n  Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee,\n  Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell’d them all,\n  And left thee sacred.\n\n  In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly,\n  In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price,\n  In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg’d sleep,\n  In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones\n      that shamed thee,\n  In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains,\n  This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,\n  The spear thrust in thy side.\n\n  O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!\n  Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on!\n\n  Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,\n  Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,\n  Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,\n  Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,\n  Onward beneath the sun following its course,\n  So thee O ship of France!\n\n  Finish’d the days, the clouds dispel’d\n  The travail o’er, the long-sought extrication,\n  When lo! reborn, high o’er the European world,\n  (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours\n      Columbia,)\n  Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star,\n  In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,\n  Shall beam immortal.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Ox-Tamer",
    "body": "  In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region,\n  Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen,\n  There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to\n      break them,\n  He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him,\n  He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock\n      chafes up and down the yard,\n  The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes,\n  Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides--how soon this tamer tames him;\n  See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old,\n      and he is the man who has tamed them,\n  They all know him, all are affectionate to him;\n  See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking;\n  Some are buff-color’d, some mottled, one has a white line running\n      along his back, some are brindled,\n  Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)--see you! the bright hides,\n  See, the two with stars on their foreheads--see, the round bodies\n      and broad backs,\n  How straight and square they stand on their legs--what fine sagacious eyes!\n  How straight they watch their tamer--they wish him near them--how\n      they turn to look after him!\n  What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them;\n  Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics,\n      poems, depart--all else departs,)\n  I confess I envy only his fascination--my silent, illiterate friend,\n  Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,\n  In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Old Man’s Thought of School",
    "body": "  [For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874]\n\n  An old man’s thought of school,\n  An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.\n\n  Now only do I know you,\n  O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass!\n\n  And these I see, these sparkling eyes,\n  These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,\n  Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,\n  Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,\n  On the soul’s voyage.\n\n  Only a lot of boys and girls?\n  Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?\n  Only a public school?\n\n  Ah more, infinitely more;\n  (As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and\n      mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?\n  Why this is not the church at all--the church is living, ever living\n      souls.”)\n\n  And you America,\n  Cast you the real reckoning for your present?\n  The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?\n  To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Wandering at Morn",
    "body": "  Wandering at morn,\n  Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,\n  Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine!\n  Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay,\n      with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,\n  This common marvel I beheld--the parent thrush I watch’d feeding its young,\n  The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,\n  Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.\n\n  There ponder’d, felt I,\n  If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn’d,\n  If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be,\n  Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;\n  Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?\n  From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,\n  Destin’d to fill the world.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Italian Music in Dakota",
    "body": "  [“The Seventeenth--the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.”]\n\n  Through the soft evening air enwinding all,\n  Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,\n  In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes,\n  Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,\n  (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,\n  Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,\n  Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera house,\n  Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,\n  Sonnambula’s innocent love, trios with Norma’s anguish,\n  And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)\n  Ray’d in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,\n  Music, Italian music in Dakota.\n\n  While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm,\n  Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,\n  Acknowledging rapport however far remov’d,\n  (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)\n  Listens well pleas’d.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "With All Thy Gifts",
    "body": "  With all thy gifts America,\n  Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,\n  Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--with these and like of\n      these vouchsafed to thee,\n  What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,)\n  The gift of perfect women fit for thee--what if that gift of gifts\n      thou lackest?\n  The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee?\n  The mothers fit for thee?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Picture-Gallery",
    "body": "  In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house,\n  It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;\n  Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories!\n  Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death;\n  Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,\n  With finger rais’d he points to the prodigal pictures.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Prairie States",
    "body": "  A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,\n  Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,\n  With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,\n  By all the world contributed--freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,\n  The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,\n  To justify the past.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Proud Music of the Storm",
    "body": "       1\n  Proud music of the storm,\n  Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies,\n  Strong hum of forest tree-tops--wind of the mountains,\n  Personified dim shapes--you hidden orchestras,\n  You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert,\n  Blending with Nature’s rhythmus all the tongues of nations;\n  You chords left as by vast composers--you choruses,\n  You formless, free, religious dances--you from the Orient,\n  You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts,\n  You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry,\n  Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls,\n  Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,\n  Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you seiz’d me?\n\n\n      2\n  Come forward O my soul, and let the rest retire,\n  Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,\n  Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,\n  For thee they sing and dance O soul.\n\n  A festival song,\n  The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,\n  With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill’d to the brim with love,\n  The red-flush’d cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of\n      friendly faces young and old,\n  To flutes’ clear notes and sounding harps’ cantabile.\n\n  Now loud approaching drums,\n  Victoria! seest thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?\n      the rout of the baffled?\n  Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?\n\n  (Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony,\n  The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken’d ruins, the embers of cities,\n  The dirge and desolation of mankind.)\n\n  Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me,\n  I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals,\n  I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love,\n  I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.\n\n  Now the great organ sounds,\n  Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,\n  On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,\n  All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know,\n  Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and\n      play, the clouds of heaven above,)\n  The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,\n  Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest,\n  And with it every instrument in multitudes,\n  The players playing, all the world’s musicians,\n  The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,\n  All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,\n  The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,\n  And for their solvent setting earth’s own diapason,\n  Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,\n  A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer,\n  As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,\n  The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,\n  The journey done, the journeyman come home,\n  And man and art with Nature fused again.\n\n  Tutti! for earth and heaven;\n  (The Almighty leader now for once has signal’d with his wand.)\n\n  The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,\n  And all the wives responding.\n\n  The tongues of violins,\n  (I think O tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself,\n  This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)\n\n       3\n  Ah from a little child,\n  Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music,\n  My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn,\n  (The voice, O tender voices, memory’s loving voices,\n  Last miracle of all, O dearest mother’s, sister’s, voices;)\n  The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn,\n  The measur’d sea-surf beating on the sand,\n  The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream,\n  The wild-fowl’s notes at night as flying low migrating north or south,\n  The psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the\n      open air camp-meeting,\n  The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,\n  The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn.\n\n 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Passage to India",
    "body": "       1\n  Singing my days,\n  Singing the great achievements of the present,\n  Singing the strong light works of engineers,\n  Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)\n  In the Old World the east the Suez canal,\n  The New by its mighty railroad spann’d,\n  The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires;\n  Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul,\n  The Past! the Past! the Past!\n\n  The Past--the dark unfathom’d retrospect!\n  The teeming gulf--the sleepers and the shadows!\n  The past--the infinite greatness of the past!\n  For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?\n  (As a projectile form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on,\n  So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)\n\n       2\n  Passage O soul to India!\n  Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.\n\n  Not you alone proud truths of the world,\n  Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,\n  But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables,\n  The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams,\n  The deep diving bibles and legends,\n  The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions;\n  O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun!\n  O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,\n      mounting to heaven!\n  You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d\n      with gold!\n  Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams!\n  You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest!\n  You too with joy I sing.\n\n  Passage to India!\n  Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?\n  The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,\n  The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,\n  The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,\n  The lands to be welded together.\n\n  A worship new I sing,\n  You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,\n  You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,\n  You, not for trade or transportation only,\n  But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.\n\n       3\n  Passage to India!\n  Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain,\n  I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open’d,\n  I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Engenie’s leading the van,\n  I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level\n      sand in the distance,\n  I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d,\n  The gigantic dredging machines.\n\n  In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,)\n  I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,\n  I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying\n      freight and passengers,\n  I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,\n  I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,\n  I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes,\n      the buttes,\n  I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless,\n      sage-deserts,\n  I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great\n      mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains,\n  I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the\n      Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas,\n  I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base,\n  I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river,\n  I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines,\n  Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold\n      enchanting mirages of waters and meadows,\n  Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines,\n  Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,\n  Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,\n  The road between Europe and Asia.\n\n  (Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream!\n  Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,\n  The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)\n\n       4\n  Passage to India!\n  Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead,\n  Over my 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Prayer of Columbus",
    "body": "  A batter’d, wreck’d old man,\n  Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,\n  Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,\n  Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death,\n  I take my way along the island’s edge,\n  Venting a heavy heart.\n\n  I am too full of woe!\n  Haply I may not live another day;\n  I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,\n  Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,\n  Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,\n  Report myself once more to Thee.\n\n  Thou knowest my years entire, my life,\n  My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;\n  Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,\n  Thou knowest my manhood’s solemn and visionary meditations,\n  Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee,\n  Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them,\n  Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,\n  In shackles, prison’d, in disgrace, repining not,\n  Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.\n\n  All my emprises have been fill’d with Thee,\n  My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,\n  Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee;\n  Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee.\n\n  O I am sure they really came from Thee,\n  The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,\n  The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,\n  A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,\n  These sped me on.\n\n  By me and these the work so far accomplish’d,\n  By me earth’s elder cloy’d and stifled lands uncloy’d, unloos’d,\n  By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.\n\n  The end I know not, it is all in Thee,\n  Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what lands,\n  Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know,\n  Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,\n  Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools,\n  Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe’s dead cross, may bud and\n      blossom there.\n\n  One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;\n  That Thou O God my life hast lighted,\n  With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,\n  Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,\n  Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;\n  For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,\n  Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.\n\n  My terminus near,\n  The clouds already closing in upon me,\n  The voyage balk’d, the course disputed, lost,\n  I yield my ships to Thee.\n\n  My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,\n  My brain feels rack’d, bewilder’d,\n  Let the old timbers part, I will not part,\n  I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,\n  Thee, Thee at least I know.\n\n  Is it the prophet’s thought I speak, or am I raving?\n  What do I know of life? what of myself?\n  I know not even my own work past or present,\n  Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,\n  Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,\n  Mocking, perplexing me.\n\n  And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?\n  As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal’d my eyes,\n  Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,\n  And on the distant waves sail countless ships,\n  And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sleepers",
    "body": "       1\n  I wander all night in my vision,\n  Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,\n  Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,\n  Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,\n  Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.\n\n  How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,\n  How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.\n\n  The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the\n      livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,\n  The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their\n      strong-door’d rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging\n      from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,\n  The night pervades them and infolds them.\n\n  The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on\n      the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,\n  The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,\n  The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,\n  And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.\n\n  The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,\n  The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,\n  The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?\n  And the murder’d person, how does he sleep?\n\n  The female that loves unrequited sleeps,\n  And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,\n  The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,\n  And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.\n\n  I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and\n      the most restless,\n  I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,\n  The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.\n\n  Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,\n  The earth recedes from me into the night,\n  I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is\n      beautiful.\n\n  I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers\n      each in turn,\n  I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,\n  And I become the other dreamers.\n\n  I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!\n\n  I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,\n  I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts whichever way look,\n  Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is\n      neither ground nor sea.\n\n  Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,\n  Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,\n  I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet besides,\n  And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,\n  To lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch’d arms, and\n      resume the way;\n  Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting\n      music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!\n\n  I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,\n  The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,\n  He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,\n  The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted or feeble person.\n\n  I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,\n  My truant lover has come, and it is dark.\n\n  Double yourself and receive me darkness,\n  Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.\n\n  I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk.\n\n  He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,\n  He rises with me silently from the bed.\n\n  Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,\n  I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.\n\n  My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,\n  I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.\n\n  Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?\n  I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,\n  I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.\n\n       2\n  I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,\n  Perfume and y
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Transpositions",
    "body": "  Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever\n      bawling--let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands;\n  Let judges and criminals be transposed--let the prison-keepers be\n      put in prison--let those that were prisoners take the keys;\n  Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Think of Time",
    "body": "      1\n  To think of time--of all that retrospection,\n  To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.\n\n  Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?\n  Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?\n  Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?\n\n  Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?\n  If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.\n\n  To think that the sun rose in the east--that men and women were\n      flexible, real, alive--that every thing was alive,\n  To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part,\n  To think that we are now here and bear our part.\n\n       2\n  Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement,\n  Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.\n\n  The dull nights go over and the dull days also,\n  The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,\n  The physician after long putting off gives the silent and terrible\n      look for an answer,\n  The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters\n      are sent for,\n  Medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long\n      pervaded the rooms,)\n  The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,\n  The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,\n  The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,\n  The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it,\n  It is palpable as the living are palpable.\n\n  The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,\n  But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously\n      on the corpse.\n\n       3\n  To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials,\n  To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking\n      great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them.\n\n  To think how eager we are in building our houses,\n  To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent.\n\n  (I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or\n      seventy or eighty years at most,\n  I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)\n\n  Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth--they never\n      cease--they are the burial lines,\n  He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall\n      surely be buried.\n\n\n      4\n  A reminiscence of the vulgar fate,\n  A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,\n  Each after his kind.\n\n  Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river,\n      half-frozen mud in the streets,\n  A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of December,\n  A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver,\n      the cortege mostly drivers.\n\n  Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell,\n  The gate is pass’d, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living\n      alight, the hearse uncloses,\n  The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on\n      the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel’d in,\n  The mound above is flatted with the spades--silence,\n  A minute--no one moves or speaks--it is done,\n  He is decently put away--is there any thing more?\n\n  He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking,\n  Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate\n      hearty, drank hearty,\n  Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the\n      last, sicken’d, was help’d by a contribution,\n  Died, aged forty-one years--and that was his funeral.\n\n  Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap,\n      wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen,\n  Boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you\n      loafing on somebody, headway, man before and man behind,\n  Good day’s work, bad day’s work, pet stock, mean stock, first out,\n      last out, turning-in at night,\n  To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers, and he\n      there takes no interest in them.\n\n       5\n  The ma
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Darest Thou Now O Soul",
    "body": "  Darest thou now O soul,\n  Walk out with me toward the unknown region,\n  Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?\n\n  No map there, nor guide,\n  Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,\n  Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.\n\n  I know it not O soul,\n  Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,\n  All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.\n\n  Till when the ties loosen,\n  All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,\n  Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.\n\n  Then we burst forth, we float,\n  In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,\n  Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Whispers of Heavenly Death",
    "body": "  Whispers of heavenly death murmur’d I hear,\n  Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals,\n  Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,\n  Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,\n  (Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)\n\n  I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses,\n  Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,\n  With at times a half-dimm’d sadden’d far-off star,\n  Appearing and disappearing.\n\n  (Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;\n  On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,\n  Some soul is passing over.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Chanting the Square Deific",
    "body": "       1\n  Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides,\n  Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,\n  Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah am I,\n  Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;\n  Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any,\n  Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments,\n  As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,\n  Aged beyond computation, yet never new, ever with those mighty laws rolling,\n  Relentless I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man’s life;\n  Therefore let none expect mercy--have the seasons, gravitation, the\n      appointed days, mercy? no more have I,\n  But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed days\n      that forgive not,\n  I dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least remorse.\n\n       2\n  Consolator most mild, the promis’d one advancing,\n  With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,\n  Foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and poems,\n  From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes--lo! Hermes I--lo! mine is\n      Hercules’ face,\n  All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,\n  Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and\n      crucified, and many times shall be again,\n  All the world have I given up for my dear brothers’ and sisters’\n      sake, for the soul’s sake,\n  Wanding my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss\n      of affection,\n  For I am affection, I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope and\n      all-enclosing charity,\n  With indulgent words as to children, with fresh and sane words, mine only,\n  Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin’d myself to an\n      early death;\n  But my charity has no death--my wisdom dies not, neither early nor late,\n  And my sweet love bequeath’d here and elsewhere never dies.\n\n       3\n  Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,\n  Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,\n  Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,\n  With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart,\n      proud as any,\n  Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me,\n  Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles,\n  (Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel’d, and my wiles\n      done, but that will never be,)\n  Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly\n      appearing, (and old ones also,)\n  Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real as any,\n  Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.\n\n       4\n  Santa Spirita, breather, life,\n  Beyond the light, lighter than light,\n  Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,\n  Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,\n  Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including\n      Saviour and Satan,\n  Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were God?)\n  Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,\n      (namely the unseen,)\n  Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, the\n      general soul,\n  Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,\n  Breathe my breath also through these songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Of Him I Love Day and Night",
    "body": "  Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was dead,\n  And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he was\n      not in that place,\n  And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find him,\n  And I found that every place was a burial-place;\n  The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)\n  The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,\n      Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as\n      of the living,\n  And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;\n  And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,\n  And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d,\n  And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,\n  And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,\n      even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,\n  And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly\n      render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied,\n  Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours",
    "body": "  Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,\n  Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,\n  Earth to a chamber of mourning turns--I hear the o’erweening, mocking\n      voice,\n  Matter is conqueror--matter, triumphant only, continues onward.\n\n  Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,\n  The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain,\n  The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,\n  Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.\n\n  I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,\n  I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,\n      your mute inquiry,\n  Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,--\n  Old age, alarm’d, uncertain--a young woman’s voice, appealing to\n      me for comfort;\n  A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As If a Phantom Caress’d Me",
    "body": "  As if a phantom caress’d me,\n  I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;\n  But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the\n      one I loved that caress’d me,\n  As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has\n      utterly disappear’d.\n  And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Assurances",
    "body": "  I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul;\n  I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and\n      face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant\n      of, calm and actual faces,\n  I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in\n      any iota of the world,\n  I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,\n      in vain I try to think how limitless,\n  I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their\n      swift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day\n      be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,\n  I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,\n  I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have\n      their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and\n      the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,\n  I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are\n      provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the\n      deaths of little children are provided for,\n  (Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport\n      of all Life, is not well provided for?)\n  I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of\n      them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has\n      gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,\n  I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any\n      time, is provided for in the inherences of things,\n  I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I\n      believe Heavenly Death provides for all.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Quicksand Years",
    "body": "  Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,\n  Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,\n  Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not,\n  One’s-self must never give way--that is the final substance--that\n      out of all is sure,\n  Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?\n  When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "That Music Always Round Me",
    "body": "  That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long\n      untaught I did not hear,\n  But now the chorus I hear and am elated,\n  A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of\n      daybreak I hear,\n  A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,\n  A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,\n  The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and\n      violins, all these I fill myself with,\n  I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite\n      meanings,\n  I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,\n      contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;\n  I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think\n      begin to know them.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "What Ship Puzzled at Sea",
    "body": "  What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?\n  Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect\n      pilot needs?\n  Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,\n  Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Noiseless Patient Spider",
    "body": "  A noiseless patient spider,\n  I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,\n  Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,\n  It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,\n  Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.\n\n  And you O my soul where you stand,\n  Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,\n  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to\n      connect them,\n  Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,\n  Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Living Always, Always Dying",
    "body": "  O living always, always dying!\n  O the burials of me past and present,\n  O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;\n  O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)\n  O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and\n      look at where I cast them,\n  To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To One Shortly to Die",
    "body": "  From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,\n  You are to die--let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,\n  I am exact and merciless, but I love you--there is no escape for you.\n\n  Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you ’ust feel it,\n  I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,\n  I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,\n  I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,\n  I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is\n      eternal, you yourself will surely escape,\n  The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.\n\n  The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,\n  Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,\n  You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,\n  You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,\n      I am with you,\n  I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,\n  I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Night on the Prairies",
    "body": "  Night on the prairies,\n  The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,\n  The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;\n  I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now\n      never realized before.\n\n  Now I absorb immortality and peace,\n  I admire death and test propositions.\n\n  How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!\n  The same old man and soul--the same old aspirations, and the same content.\n\n  I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited,\n  I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless\n      around me myriads of other globes.\n\n  Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will\n      measure myself by them,\n  And now touch’d with the lives of other globes arrived as far along\n      as those of the earth,\n  Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth,\n  I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,\n  Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.\n\n  O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,\n  I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thought",
    "body": "  As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing,\n  To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a\n      wreck at sea,\n  Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and\n      wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,\n  Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President,\n  Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder’d\n      off the Northeast coast and going down--of the steamship Arctic\n      going down,\n  Of the veil’d tableau-women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic,\n      waiting the moment that draws so close--O the moment!\n\n  A huge sob--a few bubbles--the white foam spirting up--and then the\n      women gone,\n  Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on--and I now\n      pondering, Are those women indeed gone?\n  Are souls drown’d and destroy’d so?\n  Is only matter triumphant?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Last Invocation",
    "body": "  At the last, tenderly,\n  From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,\n  From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,\n  Let me be wafted.\n\n  Let me glide noiselessly forth;\n  With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,\n  Set ope the doors O soul.\n\n  Tenderly--be not impatient,\n  (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,\n  Strong is your hold O love.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing",
    "body": "  As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,\n  Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,\n  I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;\n  (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Pensive and Faltering",
    "body": "  Pensive and faltering,\n  The words the Dead I write,\n  For living are the Dead,\n  (Haply the only living, only real,\n  And I the apparition, I the spectre.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood",
    "body": "       1\n  Thou Mother with thy equal brood,\n  Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,\n  A special song before I go I’d sing o’er all the rest,\n  For thee, the future.\n\n  I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,\n  I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,\n  I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish’d.\n\n  The paths to the house I seek to make,\n  But leave to those to come the house itself.\n\n  Belief I sing, and preparation;\n  As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,\n  But greater still from what is yet to come,\n  Out of that formula for thee I sing.\n\n       2\n  As a strong bird on pinions free,\n  Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,\n  Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,\n  Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.\n\n  The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,\n  Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,\n  Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or indoor\n      library;\n  But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath of\n      an Illinois prairie,\n  With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas\n      uplands, or Florida’s glades,\n  Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of Huron,\n  With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,\n  And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea-sound,\n  That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.\n\n  And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,\n  Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted\n      for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,\n  Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou\n      transcendental Union!\n  By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,\n  Thought of man justified, blended with God,\n  Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!\n  Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!\n\n       3\n  Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,\n  To formulate the Modern--out of the peerless grandeur of the modern,\n  Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,\n  (Recast, may-be discard them, end them--maybe their work is done,\n      who knows?)\n  By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty past, the dead,\n  To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.\n\n  And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World brain,\n  Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long,\n  Thou carefully prepared by it so long--haply thou but unfoldest it,\n      only maturest it,\n  It to eventuate in thee--the essence of the by-gone time contain’d in thee,\n  Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with\n      reference to thee;\n  Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,\n  The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.\n\n       4\n  Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy,\n  Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the Present only,\n  The Past is also stored in thee,\n  Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western\n      continent alone,\n  Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by thy spars,\n  With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or\n      swim with thee,\n  With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou\n      bear’st the other continents,\n  Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant;\n  Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman, thou\n      carriest great companions,\n  Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,\n  And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.\n\n       5\n  Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes,\n  Like a limitless golden cloud filling the westernr sky,\n  Emblem of general maternity lifted above all,\n  Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons,\n  Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless pro
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Paumanok Picture",
    "body": "  Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,\n  Ten fishermen waiting--they discover a thick school of mossbonkers\n      --they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,\n  The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the\n      beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,\n  The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,\n  Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand\n      ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,\n  The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,\n  Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,\n      the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling",
    "body": "  Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!\n  Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,\n  The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,\n  And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;\n  O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.\n\n  Hear me illustrious!\n  Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,\n  Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy\n      touching-distant beams enough,\n  Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.\n\n  (Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,\n  I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,\n  Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice--and\n      thou O sun,\n  As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of\n      flame gigantic,\n  I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)\n\n  Thou that with fructifying heat and light,\n  O’er myriad farms, o’er lands and waters North and South,\n  O’er Mississippi’s endless course, o’er Texas’ grassy plains,\n      Kanada’s woods,\n  O’er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,\n  Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas,\n  Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,\n  Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of\n      thy million millions,\n  Strike through these chants.\n\n  Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,\n  Prepare the later afternoon of me myself--prepare my lengthening shadows,\n  Prepare my starry nights.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Faces",
    "body": "       1\n  Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces!\n  Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,\n  The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,\n  The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers\n      and judges broad at the back-top,\n  The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved\n      blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens,\n  The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face,\n  The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or\n      despised face,\n  The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of\n      many children,\n  The face of an amour, the face of veneration,\n  The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,\n  The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,\n  A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper,\n  A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.\n\n  Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces\n      and faces and faces,\n  I see them and complain not, and am content with all.\n\n       2\n  Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their\n      own finale?\n\n  This now is too lamentable a face for a man,\n  Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,\n  Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.\n\n  This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage,\n  Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.\n\n  This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,\n  Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.\n\n  This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,\n  And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.\n\n  This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,\n  Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show\n      nothing but their whites,\n  Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails,\n  The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he\n      speculates well.\n\n  This face is bitten by vermin and worms,\n  And this is some murderer’s knife with a half-pull’d scabbard.\n\n  This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,\n  An unceasing death-bell tolls there.\n\n       3\n  Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas’d and\n      cadaverous march?\n  Well, you cannot trick me.\n\n  I see your rounded never-erased flow,\n  I see ’neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.\n\n  Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,\n  You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.\n\n  I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at\n      the asylum,\n  And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,\n  I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,\n  The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,\n  And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,\n  And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm’d, every inch\n      as good as myself.\n\n       4\n  The Lord advances, and yet advances,\n  Always the shadow in front, always the reach’d hand bringing up the\n      laggards.\n\n  Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is coming,\n  I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way,\n  I hear victorious drums.\n\n  This face is a life-boat,\n  This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,\n  This face is flavor’d fruit ready for eating,\n  This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.\n\n  These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,\n  They show their descent from the Master himself.\n\n  Off the word I have spoken I except not one--red, white, black, are\n      all deific,\n  In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.\n\n  Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,\n  Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,\n  I read the promise and patiently
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Mystic Trumpeter",
    "body": "       1\n  Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,\n  Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.\n\n  I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,\n  Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,\n  Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.\n\n       2\n  Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds\n  Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life\n  Was fill’d with aspirations high, unform’d ideals,\n  Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,\n  That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,\n  Gives out to no one’s ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,\n  That I may thee translate.\n\n       3\n  Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,\n  While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,\n  The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,\n  A holy calm descends like dew upon me,\n  I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,\n  I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;\n  Thy song expands my numb’d imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,\n  Floating and basking upon heaven’s lake.\n\n       4\n  Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,\n  Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.\n\n  What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,\n  Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,\n      the troubadours are singing,\n  Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy Graal;\n  I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy armor\n      seated on stately champing horses,\n  I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;\n  I see the Crusaders’ tumultuous armies--hark, how the cymbals clang,\n  Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high.\n\n       5\n  Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,\n  Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,\n  Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,\n  The heart of man and woman all for love,\n  No other theme but love--knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.\n\n  O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!\n  I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that\n      heat the world,\n  The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,\n  So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death;\n  Love, that is all the earth to lovers--love, that mocks time and space,\n  Love, that is day and night--love, that is sun and moon and stars,\n  Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,\n  No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.\n\n       6\n  Blow again trumpeter--conjure war’s alarums.\n\n  Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,\n  Lo, where the arm’d men hasten--lo, mid the clouds of dust the glint\n      of bayonets,\n  I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the\n      smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;\n  Nor war alone--thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every\n      sight of fear,\n  The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder--I hear the cries for help!\n  I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below deck the\n      terrible tableaus.\n\n       7\n  O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,\n  Thou melt’st my heart, my brain--thou movest, drawest, changest\n      them at will;\n  And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,\n  Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,\n  I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the\n      whole earth,\n  I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes\n      all mine,\n  Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds\n      and hatreds,\n  Utter defeat upon me weighs--all lost--the foe victorious,\n  (Yet ’mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,\n  Endurance, resolution to the last.)\n\n\n      8\n  Now trumpeter for thy close,\n  Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,\n  Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith a
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To a Locomotive in Winter",
    "body": "  Thee for my recitative,\n  Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,\n  Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,\n  Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,\n  Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,\n      shuttling at thy sides,\n  Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,\n  Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,\n  Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,\n  The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,\n  Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of\n      thy wheels,\n  Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,\n  Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;\n  Type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent,\n  For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,\n  With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,\n  By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,\n  By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.\n\n  Fierce-throated beauty!\n  Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps\n      at night,\n  Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake,\n      rousing all,\n  Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,\n  (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)\n  Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,\n  Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,\n  To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "O Magnet-South",
    "body": "  O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!\n  O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all\n      dear to me!\n  O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things and the trees where\n      I was born--the grains, plants, rivers,\n  Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,\n      over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,\n  Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the\n      Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,\n  O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their\n      banks again,\n  Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the\n      Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings\n      or dense forests,\n  I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the\n      blossoming titi;\n  Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast\n      up the Carolinas,\n  I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,\n      the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the\n      graceful palmetto,\n  I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,\n      and dart my vision inland;\n  O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!\n  The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,\n  The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged\n      with mistletoe and trailing moss,\n  The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in\n      these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the\n      fugitive has his conceal’d hut;)\n  O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable\n      swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the\n      alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and\n      the whirr of the rattlesnake,\n  The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,\n      singing through the moon-lit night,\n  The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;\n  A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn,\n      slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful\n      ears each well-sheath’d in its husk;\n  O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;\n  O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!\n  O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and\n      never wander more.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mannahatta",
    "body": "  I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,\n  Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.\n\n  Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,\n      musical, self-sufficient,\n  I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,\n  Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,\n  Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an\n      island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,\n  Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,\n      light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,\n  Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,\n  The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining\n      islands, the heights, the villas,\n  The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the\n      ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,\n  The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses\n      of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,\n  Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,\n  The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the\n      brown-faced sailors,\n  The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,\n  The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,\n      passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,\n  The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,\n      beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,\n  Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,\n  A million people--manners free and superb--open voices--hospitality--\n      the most courageous and friendly young men,\n  City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!\n  City nested in bays! my city!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "All Is Truth",
    "body": "  O me, man of slack faith so long,\n  Standing aloof, denying portions so long,\n  Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,\n  Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,\n      but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,\n  Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.\n\n  (This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be\n      realized,\n  I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,\n  And that the universe does.)\n\n  Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?\n  Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?\n      or in the meat and blood?\n\n  Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see\n      that there are really no liars or lies after all,\n  And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called\n      lies are perfect returns,\n  And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,\n  And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as\n      space is compact,\n  And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but\n      that all is truth without exception;\n  And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,\n  And sing and laugh and deny nothing.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Riddle Song",
    "body": "  That which eludes this verse and any verse,\n  Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind,\n  Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,\n  And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,\n  Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,\n  Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,\n  Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,\n  Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,\n  Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted,\n  Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d,\n  Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.\n\n  Indifferently, ’mid public, private haunts, in solitude,\n  Behind the mountain and the wood,\n  Companion of the city’s busiest streets, through the assemblage,\n  It and its radiations constantly glide.\n\n  In looks of fair unconscious babes,\n  Or strangely in the coffin’d dead,\n  Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,\n  As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,\n  Hiding yet lingering.\n\n  Two little breaths of words comprising it,\n  Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.\n\n  How ardently for it!\n  How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it!\n\n  How many travelers started from their homes and neer return’d!\n  How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!\n  What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it!\n  How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it--and\n      shall be to the end!\n  How all heroic martyrdoms to it!\n  How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!\n  How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and\n      land, have drawn men’s eyes,\n  Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs,\n  Or midnight’s silent glowing northern lights unreachable.\n\n  Haply God’s riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,\n  The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,\n  And heaven at last for it.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Excelsior",
    "body": "  Who has gone farthest? for I would go farther,\n  And who has been just? for I would be the most just person of the earth,\n  And who most cautious? for I would be more cautious,\n  And who has been happiest? O I think it is I--I think no one was\n      ever happier than I,\n  And who has lavish’d all? for I lavish constantly the best I have,\n  And who proudest? for I think I have reason to be the proudest son\n      alive--for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city,\n  And who has been bold and true? for I would be the boldest and\n      truest being of the universe,\n  And who benevolent? for I would show more benevolence than all the rest,\n  And who has receiv’d the love of the most friends? for I know what\n      it is to receive the passionate love of many friends,\n  And who possesses a perfect and enamour’d body? for I do not believe\n      any one possesses a more perfect or enamour’d body than mine,\n  And who thinks the amplest thoughts? for I would surround those thoughts,\n  And who has made hymns fit for the earth? for I am mad with\n      devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats",
    "body": "  Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,\n  Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,\n  (For what is my life or any man’s life but a conflict with foes, the\n      old, the incessant war?)\n  You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,\n  You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!)\n  You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses,\n  You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)\n  You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d ennuis!\n  Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth,\n  It shall yet march forth o’ermastering, till all lies beneath me,\n  It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thoughts",
    "body": "  Of public opinion,\n  Of a calm and cool fiat sooner or later, (how impassive! how certain\n      and final!)\n  Of the President with pale face asking secretly to himself, What\n      will the people say at last?\n  Of the frivolous Judge--of the corrupt Congressman, Governor,\n      Mayor--of such as these standing helpless and exposed,\n  Of the mumbling and screaming priest, (soon, soon deserted,)\n  Of the lessening year by year of venerableness, and of the dicta of\n      officers, statutes, pulpits, schools,\n  Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the\n      intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality;\n  Of the true New World--of the Democracies resplendent en-masse,\n  Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them,\n  Of the shining sun by them--of the inherent light, greater than the rest,\n  Of the envelopment of all by them, and the effusion of all from them.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mediums",
    "body": "  They shall arise in the States,\n  They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness,\n  They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos,\n  They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive,\n  They shall be complete women and men, their pose brawny and supple,\n      their drink water, their blood clean and clear,\n  They shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they\n      shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of\n      Chicago the great city.\n  They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and\n      oratresses,\n  Strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of\n      poems shall come from their lives, they shall be makers and finders,\n  Of them and of their works shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels,\n  Characters, events, retrospections, shall be convey’d in gospels,\n      trees, animals, waters, shall be convey’d,\n  Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey’d.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Weave in, My Hardy Life",
    "body": "  Weave in, weave in, my hardy life,\n  Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come,\n  Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight weave in,\n  Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the wet, the warp, incessant\n      weave, tire not,\n  (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor\n      really aught we know,\n  But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the\n      death-envelop’d march of peace as well as war goes on,)\n  For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave,\n  We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spain, 1873-74",
    "body": "  Out of the murk of heaviest clouds,\n  Out of the feudal wrecks and heap’d-up skeletons of kings,\n  Out of that old entire European debris, the shatter’d mummeries,\n  Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,\n  Lo, Freedom’s features fresh undimm’d look forth--the same immortal\n      face looks forth;\n  (A glimpse as of thy Mother’s face Columbia,\n  A flash significant as of a sword,\n  Beaming towards thee.)\n\n  Nor think we forget thee maternal;\n  Lag’d’st thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee?\n  Ah, but thou hast thyself now appear’d to us--we know thee,\n  Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself,\n  Thou waitest there as everywhere thy time.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "By Broad Potomac’s Shore",
    "body": "  By broad Potomac’s shore, again old tongue,\n  (Still uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?)\n  Again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush\n      spring returning,\n  Again the freshness and the odors, again Virginia’s summer sky,\n      pellucid blue and silver,\n  Again the forenoon purple of the hills,\n  Again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green,\n  Again the blood-red roses blooming.\n\n  Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses!\n  Lave subtly with your waters every line Potomac!\n  Give me of you O spring, before I close, to put between its pages!\n  O forenoon purple of the hills, before I close, of you!\n  O deathless grass, of you!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Far Dakota’s Canyons  [June 25, 1876]",
    "body": "  From far Dakota’s canyons,\n  Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the\n      silence,\n  Haply to-day a mournful wall, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.\n\n  The battle-bulletin,\n  The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,\n  The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,\n  In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter’d horses\n      for breastworks,\n  The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.\n\n  Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,\n  The loftiest of life upheld by death,\n  The ancient banner perfectly maintain’d,\n  O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!\n\n  As sitting in dark days,\n  Lone, sulky, through the time’s thick murk looking in vain for\n      light, for hope,\n  From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,\n  (The sun there at the centre though conceal’d,\n  Electric life forever at the centre,)\n  Breaks forth a lightning flash.\n\n  Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,\n  I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a\n      bright sword in thy hand,\n  Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,\n  (I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,)\n  Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious,\n  After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color,\n  Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,\n  Thou yieldest up thyself.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old War-Dreams",
    "body": "  In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,\n  Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)\n  Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,\n       I dream, I dream, I dream.\n\n  Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,\n  Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so\n      unearthly bright,\n  Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and\n      gather the heaps,\n       I dream, I dream, I dream.\n\n  Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields,\n  Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away\n      from the fallen,\n  Onward I sped at the time--but now of their forms at night,\n       I dream, I dream, I dream.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thick-Sprinkled Bunting",
    "body": "  Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!\n  Long yet your road, fateful flag--long yet your road, and lined with\n      bloody death,\n  For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,\n  All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner;\n  Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne to flaunt unrival’d?\n  O hasten flag of man--O with sure and steady step, passing highest\n      flags of kings,\n  Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol--run up above them all,\n  Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "What Best I See in Thee",
    "body": "  [To U. S. G. return’d from his World’s Tour]\n\n  What best I see in thee,\n  Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,\n  Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,\n  Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace,\n  Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,\n  Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;\n  But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,\n  Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,\n  Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,\n  Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round\n      world’s promenade,\n  Were all so justified.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Spirit That Form’d This Scene",
    "body": "  [Written in Platte Canyon, Colorado]\n\n  Spirit that form’d this scene,\n  These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,\n  These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,\n  These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,\n  These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,\n  I know thee, savage spirit--we have communed together,\n  Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;\n  Wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art?\n  To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?\n  The lyrist’s measur’d beat, the wrought-out temple’s grace--column\n      and polish’d arch forgot?\n  But thou that revelest here--spirit that form’d this scene,\n  They have remember’d thee.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days",
    "body": "  As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,\n  (For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,\n  Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,\n  Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,\n  Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,\n  Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)\n  Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,\n  The announcements of recognized things, science,\n  The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.\n\n  I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)\n  The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,\n  And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.\n\n  But I too announce solid things,\n  Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,\n  Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,\n      triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,\n  They stand for realities--all is as it should be.\n\n  Then my realities;\n  What else is so real as mine?\n  Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face\n      of the earth,\n  The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these\n      centuries-lasting songs,\n  And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements\n      of any.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Clear Midnight",
    "body": "  This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,\n  Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,\n  Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou\n      lovest best,\n  Night, sleep, death and the stars.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As the Time Draws Nigh",
    "body": "  As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,\n  A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.\n\n  I shall go forth,\n  I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long,\n  Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will\n      suddenly cease.\n\n  O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?\n  Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? --and yet it is\n      enough, O soul;\n  O soul, we have positively appear’d--that is enough.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Years of the Modern",
    "body": "  Years of the modern! years of the unperform’d!\n  Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,\n  I see not America only, not only Liberty’s nation but other nations\n      preparing,\n  I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity\n      of races,\n  I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage,\n  (Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts\n      suitable to them closed?)\n  I see Freedom, completely arm’d and victorious and very haughty,\n      with Law on one side and Peace on the other,\n  A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste;\n  What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?\n  I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions,\n  I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken,\n  I see the landmarks of European kings removed,\n  I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)\n  Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day,\n  Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God,\n  Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest!\n  His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the\n      Pacific, the archipelagoes,\n  With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the\n      wholesale engines of war,\n  With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all\n      geography, all lands;\n  What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing under\n      the seas?\n  Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?\n  Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim,\n  The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war,\n  No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days and nights;\n  Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to\n      pierce it, is full of phantoms,\n  Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me,\n  This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams\n      O years!\n  Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not\n      whether I sleep or wake;)\n  The perform’d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me,\n  The unperform’d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Ashes of Soldiers",
    "body": "  Ashes of soldiers South or North,\n  As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,\n  The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,\n  And again the advance of the armies.\n\n  Noiseless as mists and vapors,\n  From their graves in the trenches ascending,\n  From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,\n  From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,\n  In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or\n      single ones they come,\n  And silently gather round me.\n\n  Now sound no note O trumpeters,\n  Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,\n  With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah\n      my brave horsemen!\n  My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,\n  With all the perils were yours.)\n\n  Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn,\n  Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for burial,\n  Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.\n\n  But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,\n  Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,\n  The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,\n  I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.\n\n  Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,\n  Draw close, but speak not.\n\n  Phantoms of countless lost,\n  Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,\n  Follow me ever--desert me not while I live.\n\n  Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living--sweet are the musical\n      voices sounding,\n  But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.\n\n  Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,\n  But love is not over--and what love, O comrades!\n  Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising.\n\n  Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,\n  Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,\n  Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.\n\n  Perfume all--make all wholesome,\n  Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,\n  O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.\n\n  Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,\n  That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,\n  For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thoughts",
    "body": "       1\n  Of these years I sing,\n  How they pass and have pass’d through convuls’d pains, as through\n      parturitions,\n  How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure\n      fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of people--illustrates\n      evil as well as good,\n  The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one’s-self,\n  How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths,\n      obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,\n  How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States, or\n      see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results,\n  (But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious\n      and inevitable, and they again leading to other results.)\n\n  How the great cities appear--how the Democratic masses, turbulent,\n      willful, as I love them,\n  How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the\n      sounding and resounding, keep on and on,\n  How society waits unform’d, and is for a while between things ended\n      and things begun,\n  How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of\n      freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and\n      of all that is begun,\n  And how the States are complete in themselves--and how all triumphs\n      and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward,\n  And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be\n      convuls’d, and serve other parturitions and transitions,\n  And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses too,\n      serve--and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors,\n      serves,\n  And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.\n\n       2\n  Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,\n  Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to\n      impregnable and swarming places,\n  Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,\n  Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada,\n      and the rest,\n  (Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,)\n  Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for--and of what\n      all sights, North, South, East and West, are,\n  Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the\n      unnamed lost ever present in my mind;\n  Of the temporary use of materials for identity’s sake,\n  Of the present, passing, departing--of the growth of completer men\n      than any yet,\n  Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the\n      Mississippi flows,\n  Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey’d and unsuspected,\n  Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of\n      inalienable homesteads,\n  Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and\n      sweet blood,\n  Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,\n  Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the\n      Anahuacs,\n  Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,)\n  Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there,\n  (O it lurks in me night and day--what is gain after all to savageness\n      and freedom?)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Song at Sunset",
    "body": "  Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,\n  Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,\n  Inflating my throat, you divine average,\n  You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.\n\n  Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,\n  Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,\n  Natural life of me faithfully praising things,\n  Corroborating forever the triumph of things.\n\n  Illustrious every one!\n  Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber’d spirits,\n  Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect,\n  Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body,\n  Illustrious the passing light--illustrious the pale reflection on\n      the new moon in the western sky,\n  Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.\n\n  Good in all,\n  In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,\n  In the annual return of the seasons,\n  In the hilarity of youth,\n  In the strength and flush of manhood,\n  In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,\n  In the superb vistas of death.\n\n  Wonderful to depart!\n  Wonderful to be here!\n  The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!\n  To breathe the air, how delicious!\n  To speak--to walk--to seize something by the hand!\n  To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh!\n  To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!\n  To be this incredible God I am!\n  To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love.\n\n  Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself\n  How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!\n  How the clouds pass silently overhead!\n  How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!\n  How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!)\n  How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches\n      and leaves!\n  (Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living soul.)\n\n  O amazement of things--even the least particle!\n  O spirituality of things!\n  O strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching\n      me and America!\n  I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass\n      them forward.\n\n  I too carol the sun, usher’d or at noon, or as now, setting,\n  I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the\n      growths of the earth,\n  I too have felt the resistless call of myself.\n\n  As I steam’d down the Mississippi,\n  As I wander’d over the prairies,\n  As I have lived, as I have look’d through my windows my eyes,\n  As I went forth in the morning, as I beheld the light breaking in the east,\n  As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach\n      of the Western Sea,\n  As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have roam’d,\n  Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war,\n  Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.\n\n  I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,\n  I sing the endless finales of things,\n  I say Nature continues, glory continues,\n  I praise with electric voice,\n  For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,\n  And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.\n\n  O setting sun! though the time has come,\n  I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As at Thy Portals Also Death",
    "body": "  As at thy portals also death,\n  Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,\n  To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,\n  To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,\n  (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,\n  I sit by the form in the coffin,\n  I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks,\n      the closed eyes in the coffin;)\n  To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth,\n      life, love, to me the best,\n  I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,\n  And set a tombstone here.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Legacy",
    "body": "  The business man the acquirer vast,\n  After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for departure,\n  Devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths stocks, goods,\n      funds for a school or hospital,\n  Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens, souvenirs of gems\n      and gold.\n\n  But I, my life surveying, closing,\n  With nothing to show to devise from its idle years,\n  Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for my friends,\n  Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after you,\n  And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,\n  I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Pensive on Her Dead Gazing",
    "body": "  Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,\n  Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields gazing,\n  (As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d,)\n  As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d,\n  Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my\n      sons, lose not an atom,\n  And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,\n  And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable,\n  And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers’ depths,\n  And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children’s\n      blood trickling redden’d,\n  And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,\n  My dead absorb or South or North--my young men’s bodies absorb,\n      and their precious precious blood,\n  Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a\n      year hence,\n  In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence,\n  In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give\n      my immortal heroes,\n  Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an\n      atom be lost,\n  O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!\n  Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries hence.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Camps of Green",
    "body": "  Nor alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars,\n  When as order’d forward, after a long march,\n  Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens we halt for the night,\n  Some of us so fatigued carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping\n      asleep in our tracks,\n  Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle,\n  Outposts of pickets posted surrounding alert through the dark,\n  And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety,\n  Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums,\n  We rise up refresh’d, the night and sleep pass’d over, and resume our\n      journey,\n  Or proceed to battle.\n\n  Lo, the camps of the tents of green,\n  Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling,\n  With a mystic army, (is it too order’d forward? is it too only\n      halting awhile,\n  Till night and sleep pass over?)\n\n  Now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world,\n  In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them, in the old and young,\n  Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content\n      and silent there at last,\n  Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of all,\n  Of the corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and\n      generals all,\n  And of each of us O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fought,\n  (There without hatred we all, all meet.)\n\n  For presently O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the\n      bivouac-camps of green,\n  But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign,\n  Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]",
    "body": "  The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,\n  The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,\n  (Full well they know that message in the darkness,\n  Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the\n      sad reverberations,)\n  The passionate toll and clang--city to city, joining, sounding, passing,\n  Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As They Draw to a Close",
    "body": "  As they draw to a close,\n  Of what underlies the precedent songs--of my aims in them,\n  Of the seed I have sought to plant in them,\n  Of joy, sweet joy, through many a year, in them,\n  (For them, for them have I lived, in them my work is done,)\n  Of many an aspiration fond, of many a dream and plan;\n  Through Space and Time fused in a chant, and the flowing eternal identity,\n  To Nature encompassing these, encompassing God--to the joyous,\n      electric all,\n  To the sense of Death, and accepting exulting in Death in its turn\n      the same as life,\n  The entrance of man to sing;\n  To compact you, ye parted, diverse lives,\n  To put rapport the mountains and rocks and streams,\n  And the winds of the north, and the forests of oak and pine,\n  With you O soul.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Joy, Shipmate, Joy!",
    "body": "  Joy, shipmate, Joy!\n  (Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)\n  Our life is closed, our life begins,\n  The long, long anchorage we leave,\n  The ship is clear at last, she leaps!\n  She swiftly courses from the shore,\n  Joy, shipmate, joy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Untold Want",
    "body": "  The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,\n  Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Portals",
    "body": "  What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the Unknown?\n  And what are those of life but for Death?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "These Carols",
    "body": "  These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,\n  For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Now Finale to the Shore",
    "body": "  Now finale to the shore,\n  Now land and life finale and farewell,\n  Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,)\n  Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas,\n  Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,\n  Duly again to port and hawser’s tie returning;\n  But now obey thy cherish’d secret wish,\n  Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,\n  To port and hawser’s tie no more returning,\n  Depart upon thy endless cruise old Sailor.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "So Long!",
    "body": "  To conclude, I announce what comes after me.\n\n  I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all,\n  I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations.\n\n  When America does what was promis’d,\n  When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,\n  When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them,\n  When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,\n  Then to me and mine our due fruition.\n\n  I have press’d through in my own right,\n  I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and\n      the songs of life and death,\n  And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.\n\n  I have offer’d my style to every one, I have journey’d with confident step;\n  While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long!\n  And take the young woman’s hand and the young man’s hand for the last time.\n\n  I announce natural persons to arise,\n  I announce justice triumphant,\n  I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,\n  I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride.\n\n  I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,\n  I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble,\n  I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics\n      of the earth insignificant.\n\n  I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d,\n  I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.\n\n  I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!)\n  I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste,\n      affectionate, compassionate, fully arm’d.\n\n  I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,\n  I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.\n\n  I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,\n  I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.\n\n  O thicker and faster--(So long!)\n  O crowding too close upon me,\n  I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,\n  It appears to me I am dying.\n\n  Hasten throat and sound your last,\n  Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.\n\n  Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,\n  At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,\n  Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,\n  Curious envelop’d messages delivering,\n  Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,\n  Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,\n  To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,\n  To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set\n  promulging,\n  To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection\n      me more clearly explaining,\n  To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of\n      their brains trying,\n  So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,\n  Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making\n      me really undying,)\n  The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have\n      been incessantly preparing.\n\n  What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with\n      unshut mouth?\n  Is there a single final farewell?\n  My songs cease, I abandon them,\n  From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you.\n\n  Camerado, this is no book,\n  Who touches this touches a man,\n  (Is it night? are we here together alone?)\n  It is I you hold and who holds you,\n  I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.\n\n  O how your fingers drowse me,\n  Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans\n      of my ears,\n  I feel immerged from head to foot,\n  Delicious, enough.\n\n  Enough O deed impromptu and secret,\n  Enough O gliding present--enough O summ’d-up past.\n\n  Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,\n  I give it especially to you, do not forget me,\n  I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,\n  I receive now again of my many translations, from my avat
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mannahatta",
    "body": "  My city’s fit and noble name resumed,\n  Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,\n  A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming,\n      going, hurrying sea waves.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Paumanok",
    "body": "  Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!\n  One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,\n      steamers, sails,\n  And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle--mighty hulls\n      dark-gliding in the distance.\n  Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water--healthy air and soil!\n  Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "From Montauk Point",
    "body": "  I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,\n  Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)\n  The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,\n  The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge\n      of waves,\n  Seeking the shores forever.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Those Who’ve Fail’d",
    "body": "  To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,\n  To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,\n  To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on\n      their ships,\n  To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I’d rear\n      laurel-cover’d monument,\n  High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,\n  Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,\n  Quench’d by an early death.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine",
    "body": "  A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,\n  My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,\n  Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;\n  Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love,\n  Your aggregate retain’d entire--Of north, south, east and west, your\n      items all;\n  Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,\n  The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia\n      falling pall-like round me,\n  The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,\n  The undiminish’d faith--the groups of loving friends.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Bravest Soldiers",
    "body": "  Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through\n      the fight;\n  But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Font of Type",
    "body": "  This latent mine--these unlaunch’d voices--passionate powers,\n  Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,\n  (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)\n  These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,\n  Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,\n  Within the pallid slivers slumbering.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As I Sit Writing Here",
    "body": "  As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,\n  Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,\n  Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,\n  May filter in my dally songs.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "My Canary Bird",
    "body": "  Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books,\n  Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?\n  But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,\n  Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,\n  Is it not just as great, O soul?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Queries to My Seventieth Year",
    "body": "  Approaching, nearing, curious,\n  Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death?\n  Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?\n  Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?\n  Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,\n  Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Wallabout Martyrs",
    "body": "  Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,\n  More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,\n  Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,\n  Once living men--once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,\n  The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The First Dandelion",
    "body": "  Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,\n  As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,\n  Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass--innocent, golden, calm\n      as the dawn,\n  The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "America",
    "body": "  Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,\n  All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,\n  Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,\n  Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,\n  A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,\n  Chair’d in the adamant of Time.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Memories",
    "body": "  How sweet the silent backward tracings!\n  The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed\n      --their loves, joys, persons, voyages.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To-Day and Thee",
    "body": "  The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;\n  The course of Time and nations--Egypt, India, Greece and Rome;\n  The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,\n  Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,\n  Garner’d for now and thee--To think of it!\n  The heirdom all converged in thee!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "After the Dazzle of Day",
    "body": "  After the dazzle of day is gone,\n  Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;\n  After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,\n  Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809",
    "body": "  To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer--a pulse of thought,\n  To memory of Him--to birth of Him.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Out of May’s Shows Selected",
    "body": "  Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;\n  Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;\n  The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;\n  The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;\n  The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Halcyon Days",
    "body": "  Not from successful love alone,\n  Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;\n  But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,\n  As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,\n  As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,\n  As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs\n      really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,\n  Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!\n  The brooding and blissful halcyon days!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "FANCIES AT NAVESINK",
    "body": "   [I]  The Pilot in the Mist\n\n  Steaming the northern rapids--(an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,\n  A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,\n  Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)\n  Again ’tis just at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak,\n  Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--I press through\n      foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,\n  Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman\n  Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.\n\n\n\n  [II]  Had I the Choice\n\n  Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,\n  To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,\n  Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,\n  Or Shakspere’s woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson’s fair ladies,\n  Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme,\n      delight of singers;\n  These, these, O sea, all these I’d gladly barter,\n  Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,\n  Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,\n  And leave its odor there.\n\n\n\n  [III]  You Tides with Ceaseless Swell\n\n  You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!\n  You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space’s spread,\n  Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,\n  What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius’?\n      what Capella’s?\n  What central heart--and you the pulse--vivifies all? what boundless\n      aggregate of all?\n  What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in\n      you? what fluid, vast identity,\n  Holding the universe with all its parts as one--as sailing in a ship?\n\n\n\n  [IV]  Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning\n\n  Last of ebb, and daylight waning,\n  Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming,\n  With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,\n  Many a muffled confession--many a sob and whisper’d word,\n  As of speakers far or hid.\n\n  How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!\n  Poets unnamed--artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs,\n  Love’s unresponse--a chorus of age’s complaints--hope’s last words,\n  Some suicide’s despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and\n      never again return.\n\n  On to oblivion then!\n  On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!\n  On for your time, ye furious debouche!\n\n\n\n  [V]  And Yet Not You Alone\n\n  And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,\n  Nor you, ye lost designs alone--nor failures, aspirations;\n  I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;\n  Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again--duly the hinges turning,\n  Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,\n  Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,\n  The rhythmus of Birth eternal.\n\n\n\n  [VI]  Proudly the Flood Comes In\n\n  Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,\n  Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,\n  All throbs, dilates--the farms, woods, streets of cities--workmen at work,\n  Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing--steamers’ pennants\n      of smoke--and under the forenoon sun,\n  Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the\n      inward bound,\n  Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.\n\n\n\n  [VII]  By That Long Scan of Waves\n\n  By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself,\n  In every crest some undulating light or shade--some retrospect,\n  Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas--scenes ephemeral,\n  The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead,\n  Myself through every by-gone phase--my idle youth--old age at hand,\n  My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,\n  By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,\n  And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble--some\n      wave, or part of wave,\n  Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.\n\n\n\n  [VIII]  Then 
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Election Day, November, 1884",
    "body": "  If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,\n  ’Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor\n      your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,\n  Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic\n      geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,\n  Nor Oregon’s white cones--nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes--nor\n      Mississippi’s stream:\n  --This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name--the still\n      small voice vibrating--America’s choosing day,\n  (The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the\n      quadriennial choosing,)\n  The stretch of North and South arous’d--sea-board and inland--\n      Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,\n  The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,\n  The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,\n  Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the\n      peaceful choice of all,\n  Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:\n  --Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart\n      pants, life glows:\n  These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,\n  Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!",
    "body": "  With husky-haughty lips, O sea!\n  Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,\n  Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,\n  (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)\n  Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,\n  Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,\n  Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloos’d hurricanes,\n  Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;\n  Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all\n      eternity in thy content,\n  (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee\n      greatest--no less could make thee,)\n  Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet\n      never gain’st,\n  Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of\n      freedom-lover pent,\n  Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,\n  By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,\n  And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,\n  And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,\n  And undertones of distant lion roar,\n  (Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear--but now, rapport for once,\n  A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)\n  The first and last confession of the globe,\n  Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,\n  The tale of cosmic elemental passion,\n  Thou tellest to a kindred soul.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Death of General Grant",
    "body": "  As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,\n  From that great play on history’s stage eterne,\n  That lurid, partial act of war and peace--of old and new contending,\n  Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense;\n  All past--and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,\n  Victor’s and vanquish’d--Lincoln’s and Lee’s--now thou with them,\n  Man of the mighty days--and equal to the days!\n  Thou from the prairies!--tangled and many-vein’d and hard has been thy part,\n  To admiration has it been enacted!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Red Jacket (From Aloft)",
    "body": "  Upon this scene, this show,\n  Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,\n  (Nor in caprice alone--some grains of deepest meaning,)\n  Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,\n  As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,\n  Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct--a towering human form,\n  In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical\n      smile curving its phantom lips,\n  Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Washington’s Monument February, 1885",
    "body": "  Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:\n  Far from its base and shaft expanding--the round zones circling,\n      comprehending,\n  Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire--not\n      yours alone, America,\n  Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,\n  Or frozen North, or sultry South--the African’s--the Arab’s in his tent,\n  Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;\n  (Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same--the heir\n      legitimate, continued ever,\n  The indomitable heart and arm--proofs of the never-broken line,\n  Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same--e’en in defeat\n      defeated not, the same:)\n  Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,\n  Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,\n  Now, or to come, or past--where patriot wills existed or exist,\n  Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,\n  Stands or is rising thy true monument.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Of That Blithe Throat of Thine",
    "body": "  Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,\n  I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird--let me too welcome chilling drifts,\n  E’en the profoundest chill, as now--a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d,\n  Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay--(cold, cold, O cold!)\n  These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,\n  For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;\n  Not summer’s zones alone--not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone,\n  But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus\n      of years,\n  These with gay heart I also sing.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Broadway",
    "body": "  What hurrying human tides, or day or night!\n  What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!\n  What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!\n  What curious questioning glances--glints of love!\n  Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!\n  Thou portal--thou arena--thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups!\n  (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, facades, tell their inimitable tales;\n  Thy windows rich, and huge hotels--thy side-walks wide;)\n  Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!\n  Thou, like the parti-colored world itself--like infinite, teeming,\n      mocking life!\n  Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To Get the Final Lilt of Songs",
    "body": "  To get the final lilt of songs,\n  To penetrate the inmost lore of poets--to know the mighty ones,\n  Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson;\n  To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt--\n      to truly understand,\n  To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,\n  Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Salt Kossabone",
    "body": "  Far back, related on my mother’s side,\n  Old Salt Kossabone, I’ll tell you how he died:\n  (Had been a sailor all his life--was nearly 90--lived with his\n      married grandchild, Jenny;\n  House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and\n      stretch to open sea;)\n  The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his\n      regular custom,\n  In his great arm chair by the window seated,\n  (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,)\n  Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself--\n      And now the close of all:\n  One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long--cross-tides\n      and much wrong going,\n  At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck veering,\n  And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering,\n      cleaving, as he watches,\n  “She’s free--she’s on her destination”--these the last words--when\n      Jenny came, he sat there dead,\n  Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother’s side, far back.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dead Tenor",
    "body": "  As down the stage again,\n  With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable,\n  Back from the fading lessons of the past, I’d call, I’d tell and own,\n  How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from thee!\n  (So firm--so liquid-soft--again that tremulous, manly timbre!\n  The perfect singing voice--deepest of all to me the lesson--trial\n      and test of all:)\n  How through those strains distill’d--how the rapt ears, the soul of\n      me, absorbing\n  Fernando’s heart, Manrico’s passionate call, Ernani’s, sweet Gennaro’s,\n  I fold thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants transmuting,\n  Freedom’s and Love’s and Faith’s unloos’d cantabile,\n  (As perfume’s, color’s, sunlight’s correlation:)\n  From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor,\n  A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel’d earth,\n  To memory of thee.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Continuities",
    "body": "  Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,\n  No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.\n  Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;\n  Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.\n  Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.\n  The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,\n  The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;\n  The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;\n  To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,\n  With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Yonnondio",
    "body": "  A song, a poem of itself--the word itself a dirge,\n  Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night,\n  To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;\n  Yonnondio--I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with\n      plains and mountains dark,\n  I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors,\n  As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the\n      twilight,\n  (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls!\n  No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)\n  Yonnondio! Yonnondio!--unlimn’d they disappear;\n  To-day gives place, and fades--the cities, farms, factories fade;\n  A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air\n      for a moment,\n  Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Life",
    "body": "  Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;\n  (Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies--and fresh again;)\n  Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new;\n  Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud\n      applause;\n  Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;\n  Struggling to-day the same--battling the same.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "“Going Somewhere”",
    "body": "  My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,\n  (Now buried in an English grave--and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,)\n  Ended our talk--“The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern\n      learning, intuitions deep,\n  “Of all Geologies--Histories--of all Astronomy--of Evolution,\n      Metaphysics all,\n  “Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,\n  “Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is\n      duly over,)\n  “The world, the race, the soul--in space and time the universes,\n  “All bound as is befitting each--all surely going somewhere.”",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Small the Theme of My Chant",
    "body": "  Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest--namely, One’s-Self--\n      a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing.\n  Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone,\n      nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;--I say the Form complete\n      is worthier far. The Female equally with the Male, I sing.\n  Nor cease at the theme of One’s-Self. I speak the word of the\n      modern, the word En-Masse.\n  My Days I sing, and the Lands--with interstice I knew of hapless War.\n  (O friend, whoe’er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I\n      feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return.\n  And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than once, and\n      link’d together let us go.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "True Conquerors",
    "body": "  Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,)\n  Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,\n  Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars;\n  Enough that they’ve survived at all--long life’s unflinching ones!\n  Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all--\n      in that alone,\n  True conquerors o’er all the rest.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The United States to Old World Critics",
    "body": "  Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,\n  Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;\n  As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,\n  Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,\n  The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Calming Thought of All",
    "body": "  That coursing on, whate’er men’s speculations,\n  Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,\n  Amid the bawling presentations new and old,\n  The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Thanks in Old Age",
    "body": "  Thanks in old age--thanks ere I go,\n  For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air--for life, mere life,\n  For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear--you,\n      father--you, brothers, sisters, friends,)\n  For all my days--not those of peace alone--the days of war the same,\n  For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,\n  For shelter, wine and meat--for sweet appreciation,\n  (You distant, dim unknown--or young or old--countless, unspecified,\n      readers belov’d,\n  We never met, and neer shall meet--and yet our souls embrace, long,\n      close and long;)\n  For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books--for colors, forms,\n  For all the brave strong men--devoted, hardy men--who’ve forward\n      sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands\n  For braver, stronger, more devoted men--(a special laurel ere I go,\n      to life’s war’s chosen ones,\n  The cannoneers of song and thought--the great artillerists--the\n      foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)\n  As soldier from an ended war return’d--As traveler out of myriads,\n      to the long procession retrospective,\n  Thanks--joyful thanks!--a soldier’s, traveler’s thanks.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Life and Death",
    "body": "  The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,\n  Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.\n  By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on,\n  To ours to-day--and we pass on the same.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Voice of the Rain",
    "body": "  And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,\n  Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:\n  I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,\n  Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,\n  Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and\n      yet the same,\n  I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,\n  And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;\n  And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,\n      and make pure and beautify it;\n  (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,\n  Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here",
    "body": "  Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;\n  Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt--A little while,\n  And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and\n      growth--a thousand forms shall rise\n  From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.\n\n  Thine eyes, ears--all thy best attributes--all that takes cognizance\n      of natural beauty,\n  Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the\n      delicate miracles of earth,\n  Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,\n  The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming\n      plum and cherry;\n  With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs--the\n      flitting bluebird;\n  For such the scenes the annual play brings on.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "While Not the Past Forgetting",
    "body": "  While not the past forgetting,\n  To-day, at least, contention sunk entire--peace, brotherhood uprisen;\n  For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands,\n  Lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, North or South,\n  (Nor for the past alone--for meanings to the future,)\n  Wreaths of roses and branches of palm.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dying Veteran",
    "body": "  Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,\n  Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,\n  I cast a reminiscence--(likely ’twill offend you,\n  I heard it in my boyhood;)--More than a generation since,\n  A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,\n  (Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic,\n  Had fought in the ranks--fought well--had been all through the\n      Revolutionary war,)\n  Lay dying--sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,\n  Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words:\n  “Let me return again to my war-days,\n  To the sights and scenes--to forming the line of battle,\n  To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,\n  To the cannons, the grim artillery,\n  To the galloping aides, carrying orders,\n  To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,\n  The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;\n  Away with your life of peace!--your joys of peace!\n  Give me my old wild battle-life again!”",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Stronger Lessons",
    "body": "  Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were\n      tender with you, and stood aside for you?\n  Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject you, and\n      brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt,\n      or dispute the passage with you?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Prairie Sunset",
    "body": "  Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,\n  The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power consign’d\n      for once to colors;\n  The light, the general air possess’d by them--colors till now unknown,\n  No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian--\n      North, South, all,\n  Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Twenty Years",
    "body": "  Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting:\n  He shipp’d as green-hand boy, and sail’d away, (took some sudden,\n      vehement notion;)\n  Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,\n  While he the globe was circling round and round, --and now returns:\n  How changed the place--all the old land-marks gone--the parents dead;\n  (Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good--to settle--has a\n      well-fill’d purse--no spot will do but this;)\n  The little boat that scull’d him from the sloop, now held in leash I see,\n  I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the sand,\n  I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass,\n  I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded--the stout-strong frame,\n  Dress’d in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:\n  (Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the future?)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Orange Buds by Mail from Florida",
    "body": "  A lesser proof than old Voltaire’s, yet greater,\n  Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,\n  To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,\n  Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land and tide,\n  Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,\n  Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,\n  A bunch of orange buds by mall from Florida.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Twilight",
    "body": "  The soft voluptuous opiate shades,\n  The sun just gone, the eager light dispell’d--(I too will soon be\n      gone, dispell’d,)\n  A haze--nirwana--rest and night--oblivion.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me",
    "body": "  You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,\n  And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;\n  You tokens diminute and lorn--(not now the flush of May, or July\n      clover-bloom--no grain of August now;)\n  You pallid banner-staves--you pennants valueless--you overstay’d of time,\n  Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,\n  The faithfulest--hardiest--last.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone",
    "body": "  Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like\n      eagles’ talons,)\n  But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some\n      summer--bursting forth,\n  To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade--to nourishing fruit,\n  Apples and grapes--the stalwart limbs of trees emerging--the fresh,\n      free, open air,\n  And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dead Emperor",
    "body": "  To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia,\n  Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow--less for the Emperor,\n  Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o’er many a salt sea mile,\n  Mourning a good old man--a faithful shepherd, patriot.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "As the Greek’s Signal Flame",
    "body": "  As the Greek’s signal flame, by antique records told,\n  Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory,\n  Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero,\n  With rosy tinge reddening the land he’d served,\n  So I aloft from Mannahatta’s ship-fringed shore,\n  Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Dismantled Ship",
    "body": "  In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,\n  On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,\n  An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,\n  After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and\n      hawser’d tight,\n  Lies rusting, mouldering.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Now Precedent Songs, Farewell",
    "body": "  Now precedent songs, farewell--by every name farewell,\n  (Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons,\n  From ups and downs--with intervals--from elder years, mid-age, or youth,)\n  “In Cabin’d Ships, or Thee Old Cause or Poets to Come\n  Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam,\n  Or Beat! Beat! Drums! or To the Leaven’d Soil they Trod,\n  Or Captain! My Captain! Kosmos, Quicksand Years, or Thoughts,\n  Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more unspecified,\n  From fibre heart of mine--from throat and tongue--(My life’s hot\n      pulsing blood,\n  The personal urge and form for me--not merely paper, automatic type\n      and ink,)\n  Each song of mine--each utterance in the past--having its long, long\n      history,\n  Of life or death, or soldier’s wound, of country’s loss or safety,\n  (O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared\n      indeed to that!\n  What wretched shred e’en at the best of all!)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Evening Lull",
    "body": "  After a week of physical anguish,\n  Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,\n  Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,\n  Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Age’s Lambent Peaks",
    "body": "  The touch of flame--the illuminating fire--the loftiest look at last,\n  O’er city, passion, sea--o’er prairie, mountain, wood--the earth itself,\n  The airy, different, changing hues of all, in failing twilight,\n  Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;\n  The calmer sight--the golden setting, clear and broad:\n  So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence\n      we scan,\n  Bro’t out by them alone--so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before;\n  The lights indeed from them--old age’s lambent peaks.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "After the Supper and Talk",
    "body": "  After the supper and talk--after the day is done,\n  As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,\n  Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,\n  (So hard for his hand to release those hands--no more will they meet,\n  No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,\n  A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)\n  Shunning, postponing severance--seeking to ward off the last word\n      ever so little,\n  E’en at the exit-door turning--charges superfluous calling back--\n      e’en as he descends the steps,\n  Something to eke out a minute additional--shadows of nightfall deepening,\n  Farewells, messages lessening--dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and form,\n  Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness--loth, O so loth to depart!\n  Garrulous to the very last.\n\n\n\n\nBOOKXXXV.  GOOD-BYE MY FANCY",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sail out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!",
    "body": "  Heave the anchor short!\n  Raise main-sail and jib--steer forth,\n  O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters,\n  (I will not call it our concluding voyage,\n  But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)\n  Depart, depart from solid earth--no more returning to these shores,\n  Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,\n  Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,\n  Sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Lingering Last Drops",
    "body": "  And whence and why come you?\n\n  We know not whence, (was the answer,)\n  We only know that we drift here with the rest,\n  That we linger’d and lagg’d--but were wafted at last, and are now here,\n  To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Good-Bye My Fancy",
    "body": "  Good-bye my fancy--(I had a word to say,\n  But ’tis not quite the time--The best of any man’s word or say,\n  Is when its proper place arrives--and for its meaning,\n  I keep mine till the last.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!",
    "body": "  On, on the same, ye jocund twain!\n  My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,\n  Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in\n      one--combining all,\n  My single soul--aims, confirmations, failures, joys--Nor single soul alone,\n  I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America’s, haply humanity’s)--\n      the trial great, the victory great,\n  A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,\n      the ancient, medieval,\n  Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats--here\n      at the west a voice triumphant--justifying all,\n  A gladsome pealing cry--a song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction;\n  I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the\n      best sooner than the worst)--And now I chant old age,\n  (My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,\n      autumn’s spread,\n  I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses\n      winter-cool’d the same;)\n  As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and love,\n  wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,\n  On, on ye jocund twain! continue on the same!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "MY 71st Year",
    "body": "  After surmounting three-score and ten,\n  With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,\n  My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing\n      passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4,\n  As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or\n      haply after battle,\n  To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,\n      with vital voice,\n  Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Apparitions",
    "body": "  A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages:\n  (Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,\n  That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,\n      non-realities.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Pallid Wreath",
    "body": "  Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,\n  Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,\n  With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy,\n  One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;\n  But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?\n  Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?\n  No, while memories subtly play--the past vivid as ever;\n  For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,\n  Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:\n  So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,\n  It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "An Ended Day",
    "body": "  The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,\n  The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;\n  Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s",
    "body": "  From east and west across the horizon’s edge,\n  Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us:\n  But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas--a battle-contest yet! bear\n      lively there!\n  (Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!)\n  Put on the old ship all her power to-day!\n  Crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal studding-sails,\n  Out challenge and defiance--flags and flaunting pennants added,\n  As we take to the open--take to the deepest, freest waters.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the Pending Year",
    "body": "  Have I no weapon-word for thee--some message brief and fierce?\n  (Have I fought out and done indeed the battle?) Is there no shot left,\n  For all thy affectations, lisps, scorns, manifold silliness?\n  Nor for myself--my own rebellious self in thee?\n\n  Down, down, proud gorge!--though choking thee;\n  Thy bearded throat and high-borne forehead to the gutter;\n  Crouch low thy neck to eleemosynary gifts.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher",
    "body": "  I doubt it not--then more, far more;\n  In each old song bequeath’d--in every noble page or text,\n  (Different--something unreck’d before--some unsuspected author,)\n  In every object, mountain, tree, and star--in every birth and life,\n  As part of each--evolv’d from each--meaning, behind the ostent,\n  A mystic cipher waits infolded.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Long, Long Hence",
    "body": "  After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,\n  Accumulations, rous’d love and joy and thought,\n  Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers,\n  Coating, compassing, covering--after ages’ and ages’ encrustations,\n  Then only may these songs reach fruition.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Bravo, Paris Exposition!",
    "body": "  Add to your show, before you close it, France,\n  With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods,\n      machines and ores,\n  Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid,\n  (We grand-sons and great-grandsons do not forget your grandsires,)\n  From fifty Nations and nebulous Nations, compacted, sent oversea to-day,\n  America’s applause, love, memories and good-will.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Interpolation Sounds",
    "body": "  Over and through the burial chant,\n  Organ and solemn service, sermon, bending priests,\n  To me come interpolation sounds not in the show--plainly to me,\n      crowding up the aisle and from the window,\n  Of sudden battle’s hurry and harsh noises--war’s grim game to sight\n      and ear in earnest;\n  The scout call’d up and forward--the general mounted and his aides\n      around him--the new-brought word--the instantaneous order issued;\n  The rifle crack--the cannon thud--the rushing forth of men from their\n      tents;\n  The clank of cavalry--the strange celerity of forming ranks--the\n      slender bugle note;\n  The sound of horses’ hoofs departing--saddles, arms, accoutrements.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "To the Sun-Set Breeze",
    "body": "  Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,\n  Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,\n  Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing\n  Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;\n  Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better\n      than talk, book, art,\n  (Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the\n      rest--and this is of them,)\n  So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within--thy soothing fingers\n      my face and hands,\n  Thou, messenger--magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,\n  (Distances balk’d--occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)\n  I feel the sky, the prairies vast--I feel the mighty northern lakes,\n  I feel the ocean and the forest--somehow I feel the globe itself\n      swift-swimming in space;\n  Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone--haply from endless store,\n      God-sent,\n  (For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)\n  Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and\n      cannot tell,\n  Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all\n      Astronomy’s last refinement?\n  Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Old Chants",
    "body": "  An ancient song, reciting, ending,\n  Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All,\n  Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee,\n  Accept me, thou saidst, the elder ballads,\n  And name for me before thou goest each ancient poet.\n\n  (Of many debts incalculable,\n  Haply our New World’s chieftest debt is to old poems.)\n\n  Ever so far back, preluding thee, America,\n  Old chants, Egyptian priests, and those of Ethiopia,\n  The Hindu epics, the Grecian, Chinese, Persian,\n  The Biblic books and prophets, and deep idyls of the Nazarene,\n  The Iliad, Odyssey, plots, doings, wanderings of Eneas,\n  Hesiod, Eschylus, Sophocles, Merlin, Arthur,\n  The Cid, Roland at Roncesvalles, the Nibelungen,\n  The troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, skalds,\n  Chaucer, Dante, flocks of singing birds,\n  The Border Minstrelsy, the bye-gone ballads, feudal tales, essays, plays,\n  Shakespere, Schiller, Walter Scott, Tennyson,\n  As some vast wondrous weird dream-presences,\n  The great shadowy groups gathering around,\n  Darting their mighty masterful eyes forward at thee,\n  Thou! with as now thy bending neck and head, with courteous hand\n      and word, ascending,\n  Thou! pausing a moment, drooping thine eyes upon them, blent\n      with their music,\n  Well pleased, accepting all, curiously prepared for by them,\n  Thou enterest at thy entrance porch.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Christmas Greeting",
    "body": "  Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready;\n  A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hall!\n  (Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,\n      impedimentas,\n  Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and\n      the faith;)\n  To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee from us\n      the expectant eye,\n  Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well,\n  The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,\n  (More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)\n  The height to be superb humanity.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Sounds of the Winter",
    "body": "  Sounds of the winter too,\n  Sunshine upon the mountains--many a distant strain\n  From cheery railroad train--from nearer field, barn, house,\n  The whispering air--even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn,\n  Children’s and women’s tones--rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,\n  An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,\n  Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Twilight Song",
    "body": "  As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,\n  Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes--of the countless buried unknown\n      soldiers,\n  Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s--the unreturn’d,\n  The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the\n      deep-fill’d trenches\n  Of gather’d from dead all America, North, South, East, West, whence\n      they came up,\n  From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania,\n      Illinois, Ohio,\n  From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas,\n  (Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless\n      flickering flames,\n  Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising--I hear the\n      rhythmic tramp of the armies;)\n  You million unwrit names all, all--you dark bequest from all the war,\n  A special verse for you--a flash of duty long neglected--your mystic\n      roll strangely gather’d here,\n  Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes,\n  Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many\n      future year,\n  Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,\n  Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "When the Full-Grown Poet Came",
    "body": "  When the full-grown poet came,\n  Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its\n      shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;\n  But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled,\n      Nay he is mine alone;\n  --Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each\n      by the hand;\n  And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,\n  Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,\n  And wholly and joyously blends them.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Osceola",
    "body": "  When his hour for death had come,\n  He slowly rais’d himself from the bed on the floor,\n  Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around\n      his waist,\n  Call’d for vermilion paint (his looking-glass was held before him,)\n  Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands.\n  Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt--then lying down, resting\n      moment,\n  Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand\n      to each and all,\n  Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,)\n  Fix’d his look on wife and little children--the last:\n\n  (And here a line in memory of his name and death.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Voice from Death",
    "body": "  A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power,\n  With sudden, indescribable blow--towns drown’d--humanity by\n      thousands slain,\n  The vaunted work of thrift, goods, dwellings, forge, street, iron bridge,\n  Dash’d pell-mell by the blow--yet usher’d life continuing on,\n  (Amid the rest, amid the rushing, whirling, wild debris,\n  A suffering woman saved--a baby safely born!)\n\n  Although I come and unannounc’d, in horror and in pang,\n  In pouring flood and fire, and wholesale elemental crash, (this\n      voice so solemn, strange,)\n  I too a minister of Deity.\n\n  Yea, Death, we bow our faces, veil our eyes to thee,\n  We mourn the old, the young untimely drawn to thee,\n  The fair, the strong, the good, the capable,\n  The household wreck’d, the husband and the wife, the engulfed forger\n      in his forge,\n  The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud,\n  The gather’d thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never\n      found or gather’d.\n\n  Then after burying, mourning the dead,\n  (Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the\n      past, here new musing,)\n  A day--a passing moment or an hour--America itself bends low,\n  Silent, resign’d, submissive.\n\n  War, death, cataclysm like this, America,\n  Take deep to thy proud prosperous heart.\n\n  E’en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime,\n  The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love,\n  From West and East, from South and North and over sea,\n  Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on;\n  And from within a thought and lesson yet.\n\n  Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air!\n  Thou waters that encompass us!\n  Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep!\n  Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all,\n  Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant!\n  Thou! thou! the vital, universal, giant force resistless, sleepless, calm,\n  Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy,\n  How ill to e’er forget thee!\n\n  For I too have forgotten,\n  (Wrapt in these little potencies of progress, politics, culture,\n      wealth, inventions, civilization,)\n  Have lost my recognition of your silent ever-swaying power, ye\n      mighty, elemental throes,\n  In which and upon which we float, and every one of us is buoy’d.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "A Persian Lesson",
    "body": "  For his o’erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,\n  In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,\n  On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,\n  Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,\n  Spoke to the young priests and students.\n\n  “Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,\n  Allah is all, all, all--immanent in every life and object,\n  May-be at many and many-a-more removes--yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.\n\n  “Has the estray wander’d far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?\n  Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?\n  Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;\n  The something never still’d--never entirely gone? the invisible need\n      of every seed?\n\n  “It is the central urge in every atom,\n  (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)\n  To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,\n  Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.”",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Commonplace",
    "body": "  The commonplace I sing;\n  How cheap is health! how cheap nobility!\n  Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;\n  The open air I sing, freedom, toleration,\n  (Take here the mainest lesson--less from books--less from the schools,)\n  The common day and night--the common earth and waters,\n  Your farm--your work, trade, occupation,\n  The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "“The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”",
    "body": "  The devilish and the dark, the dying and diseas’d,\n  The countless (nineteen-twentieths) low and evil, crude and savage,\n  The crazed, prisoners in jail, the horrible, rank, malignant,\n  Venom and filth, serpents, the ravenous sharks, liars, the dissolute;\n  (What is the part the wicked and the loathesome bear within earth’s\n      orbic scheme?)\n  Newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons,\n  The barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Mirages",
    "body": "  More experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for;\n  Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,\n  Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in\n      plain sight,\n  Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,\n  (Account for it or not--credit or not--it is all true,\n  And my mate there could tell you the like--we have often confab’d\n      about it,)\n  People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could be,\n  Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in corners,\n  Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent sons,\n  Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,\n  Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,\n  Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,\n  Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,\n  (I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)\n  Show’d to me--just to the right in the sky-edge,\n  Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "L. of G.’s Purport",
    "body": "  Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable\n      masses (even to expose them,)\n  But add, fuse, complete, extend--and celebrate the immortal and the good.\n  Haughty this song, its words and scope,\n  To span vast realms of space and time,\n  Evolution--the cumulative--growths and generations.\n\n  Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued,\n  Wandering, peering, dallying with all--war, peace, day and night\n      absorbing,\n  Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,\n  I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.\n\n  I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:\n  To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years--\n  Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "The Unexpress’d",
    "body": "  How dare one say it?\n  After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,\n  Vaunted Ionia’s, India’s--Homer, Shakspere--the long, long times’\n      thick dotted roads, areas,\n  The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars--Nature’s pulses reap’d,\n  All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,\n  All ages’ plummets dropt to their utmost depths,\n  All human lives, throats, wishes, brains--all experiences’ utterance;\n  After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,\n  Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print--something lacking,\n  (Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Grand Is the Seen",
    "body": "  Grand is the seen, the light, to me--grand are the sky and stars,\n  Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,\n  And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;\n  But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,\n  Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing\n      the sea,\n  (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what\n      amount without thee?)\n  More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!\n  More multiform far--more lasting thou than they.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Unseen Buds",
    "body": "  Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,\n  Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,\n  Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,\n  Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;\n  Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,\n  (On earth and in the sea--the universe--the stars there in the\n      heavens,)\n  Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,\n  And waiting ever more, forever more behind.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  },
  {
    "title": "Good-Bye My Fancy!",
    "body": "  Good-bye my Fancy!\n  Farewell dear mate, dear love!\n  I’m going away, I know not where,\n  Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,\n  So Good-bye my Fancy.\n\n  Now for my last--let me look back a moment;\n  The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,\n  Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.\n\n  Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;\n  Delightful!--now separation--Good-bye my Fancy.\n\n  Yet let me not be too hasty,\n  Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended\n      into one;\n  Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)\n  If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,\n  May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,\n  May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who\n      knows?)\n  May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning--so now finally,\n  Good-bye--and hail! my Fancy.",
    "author": "Walt Whitman",
    "source": "Leaves of Grass",
    "period": "1891–1892"
  }
]