Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
Index of First Lines
- Aarm’d year! year of the struggle!
- A batter’d, wreck’d old man
- Aboard, at a ship’s helm
- A California song!
- Adieu, O soldier!
- Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road
- After all, not to create only, or found only
- After the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds
- Ages and ages, returning at intervals
- A glimpse, through an interstice caught
- A great year and place
- Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats!
- A leaf for hand in hand!
- A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands
- All submit to them, where they sit
- All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages
- A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown
- A mask—a perpetual natural disguiser of herself
- America always!
- Among the men and women, the multitude
- And now, gentlemen
- A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude
- A noiseless, patient spider
- An old man bending, I come, among new faces
- An old man’s thought of School
- A promise to California
- Are you the new person drawn toward me?
- As Adam, early in the morning
- As a strong bird on pinions free
- As at thy portals also death
- As consequent from store of summer rains
- Ashes of soldiers!
- As if a phantom caress’d me
- A sight in camp in the day-break grey and dim
- As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado
- As I ponder’d in silence
- As I sat alone, by blue Ontario’s shore
- As I sit with others, at a great feast
- As I walk these broad, majestic days of peace
- As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing
- A song of the good green grass!
- As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud
- As they draw to a close
- As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods
- A thousand perfect men and women appear
- At the last, tenderly
- A woman waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking
- Bathed in war’s perfume—delicate flag!
- Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
- Be composed—be at ease with me
- Beginning my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much
- Behavior—fresh, native, copious
- Behold this swarthy face—these gray eyes
- Brother of all, with generous hand
- Business man, the acquirer vast, The
- By broad Potomac’s shore—again, old tongue!
- By the bivouac’s fitful flame
- By the City Dead-House, by the gate
- Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing
- City of orgies, walks and joys!
- City of ships!
- Come closer to me
- Come, I will make the continent indissoluble
- Come, my tan-faced children
- Come, said the Muse
- Come up from the fields, father
- Courage yet! my brother or my sister!
- Darest thou now, O Soul
- Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
- Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night
- Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
- Earth! my likeness!
- Earth, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals
- Elemental drifts!
- Facing west, from California’s shores
- Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty
- Fast-anchor’d, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
- First, O songs, for a prelude
- Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face
- For him I sing
- Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts
- From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you
- From far Dakota’s cañons
- From my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath
- From Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird
- From pent-up, aching rivers
- Full of life, now, compact, visible
- Give me the splendid silent sun
- Give me your hand, old Revolutionary
- Gliding o’er all, through all
- Great are the myths—I too delight in them
- Hark! some wild trumpeter—some strange musician
- Hast never come to thee an hour
- He is wisest who has the most caution
- Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting
- Here, take this gift!
- Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back!
- Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted
- How solemn, as one by one
- How they are provided for upon the earth
- Hush’d be the camps to-day
- I am he that aches with amorous love
- I celebrate myself
- I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city
- I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear
- I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle
- I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ
- I hear it was charged against me
- I met a Seer
- In a little house keep I pictures suspended
- In a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region
- In cabin’d ships, at sea
- Indications, and tally of time, The
- I need no assurances—I am a man who is preoccupied
- In former songs Pride have I sung
- In midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish
- In paths untrodden
- In the new garden, in all the parts
- I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing
- I saw old General at bay
- I say whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person
- I see before me now, a traveling army halting
- I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself
- I see the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother
- I sing the Body electric
- I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world
- Is reform needed? Is it through you?
- I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore
- I wander all night in my vision
- I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city
- I was looking a long while for a clue to the history
- I will take an egg out of the robin’s nest in the orchard
- Joy! shipmate—joy!
- Last sunbeam, The
- Laws for Creations
- Let us twain walk aside from the rest
- Locations and times—what is it in me that meets them all
- Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me
- Long, too long, O land
- Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene
- Lo! the unbounded sea!
- Lo! Victress on the peaks!
- Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d, pondering
- Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature
- Myself and mine gymnastic ever
- My spirit to yours, dear brother
- Nations ten thousand years before These States
- Native moments! when you come upon me—Ah you are here now!
- Night on the prairies
- Noble Sire, fallen on evil days, The
- No labor-saving machine
- Not alone those camps of white, O soldiers
- Not heat flames up and consumes
- Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only
- Not my enemies ever invade me
- Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port
- Not youth pertains to me
- Now, dearest comrade, lift me to your face
- Now finale to the shore!
- Now I make a leaf of Voices
- Now list to my morning’s romanza
- O a new song, a free song
- O bitter sprig! Confession sprig!
- O boy of the West!
- O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done
- Of Equality—As if it harm’d me
- Of him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead
- Of Justice—As if Justice
- Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness
- Of ownership—As if one fit to own things
- Of persons arrived at high positions
- Of Public Opinion
- Of these years I sing
- Of the terrible doubt of appearances
- Of the visages of things
- Of what I write from myself
- O hymen! O hymenee!
- O living always—always dying!
- O magnet-south! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
- O mater! O fils!
- O me, man of slack faith so long!
- O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring
- On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner
- Once I pass’d through a populous city, imprinting my brain
- One hour to madness and joy!
- One song, America, before I go
- One’s-self I sing—a simple, separate Person
- One sweeps by, attended by an immense train
- On journeys through the States we start
- Only themselves understand themselves
- On my northwest coast in the midst of the night
- On the beach, at night
- On the beach at night alone
- Or, from that Sea of Time
- O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
- O star of France!
- O sun of real peace! O hastening light!
- O take my hand, Walt Whitman!
- O tan-faced prairie-boy!
- Others may praise what they like
- O to make the most jubilant poem!
- Out from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask
- Out of the cradle endlessly rocking
- Out of the murk of heaviest clouds
- Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me
- Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice
- Over the western sea, hither from Niphon come
- O you whom I often and silently come where you are
- Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you
- Pensive and faltering
- Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All
- Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
- Prairie-grass dividing—its special odor breathing, The
- Primeval my love for the woman I love
- Proud music of the storm!
- Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither
- Race of veterans! Race of victors!
- Recorders ages hence!
- Respondez! Respondez!
- Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps
- Roaming in thought over the Universe
- Roots and leaves themselves alone are these
- Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road
- Scented herbage of my breast
- Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries
- Silent and amazed, even when a little boy
- Singing my days
- Skirting the river road, my forenoon walk, my rest
- Small is the theme of the following Chant
- Sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere, The
- So far, and so far, and on toward the end
- Solid, ironical, rolling orb!
- Something startles me where I thought I was safest
- Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage
- Spirit that form’d this scene
- Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
- Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me!
- Spontaneous me, Nature
- Starting from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born
- States!
- Still, though the one I sing
- Stranger! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me
- Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves
- Tears! tears! tears!
- That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning
- That shadow, my likeness, that goes to and fro
- That which eludes this verse and any verse
- Thee for my recitative!
- There are who teach only the sweet lessons of peace and safety
- There was a child went forth every day
- These Carols, sung to cheer my passage through the world I see
- These, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers
- They shall arise in the States
- Thick-sprinkled bunting! Flag of stars!
- Think of the Soul
- This day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror
- This dust was once the Man
- This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless
- This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone
- Thither, as I look, I see each result and glory
- Thought of the Infinite—the All!
- Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn
- Through the soft evening air enwrinding all
- Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I
- Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
- Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm
- To conclude—I announce what comes after me
- To-day a rude brief recitative
- To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early
- To oratists—to male or female
- To the East and to the West
- To thee, old Cause!
- To the garden, the world, anew ascending
- To the leaven’d soil they trod
- To The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States
- To think of time—of all that retrospection!
- Trickle, drops! my blue veins leaving!
- Turn, O Libertad, for the war is over
- Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still
- Two Rivulets side by side
- Unfolded out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded
- Untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, The
- Vigil strange I kept on the field one night
- Wandering at morn
- Warble me now, for joy of Lilac-time
- Weapon, shapely, naked, wan!
- Weave in! weave in, my hardy life!
- We two boys together clinging
- We two—how long we were fool’d!
- What am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound
- What are those of the known, but to ascend and enter the Unknown?
- What best I see in thee
- What General has a good army in himself, has a good army
- What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
- What ship, puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?
- What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
- What weeping face is that looking from the window?
- What you give me, I cheerfully accept
- When I heard at the close of the day how my name
- When I heard the learn’d astronomer
- When I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes
- When I read the book, the biography famous
- When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d
- Where the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on
- While my wife at my side lies slumbering
- Whispers of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear
- Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human
- Whoever you are, holding me now in hand
- Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams
- Who has gone farthest? For lo! have not I gone farther?
- Who includes diversity, and is Nature
- Who is now reading this?
- Who learns my lesson complete?
- Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
- Why! who makes much of a miracle?
- Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running
- With all thy gifts, America
- With antecedents
- With its cloud of skirmishers in advance
- Women sit, or move to and fro—some old, some young
- Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
- World below the brine, The
- World, take good notice, silver stars fading
- Year of meteors! brooding year!
- Years of the modern! years of the unperform’d!
- Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!
- Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also
- You felons on trial in courts
- You just maturing youth! You male or female!
- You who celebrate bygones!