The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? Listen, dear son – listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess – and yet it satisfies – it is great; But there is something else very great – it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.
I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences.
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.
Caution seldom goes far enough.
The young are beautiful – but the old are more beautiful than the young.
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
However convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here.
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning.
Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul, Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic, And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return, And may be just as much as the seasons.
The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of Humanity and Nature – the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.
Some people are so much sunlight to the square inch. I am still bathing in the cheer he radiated.
Although this poetry collection was first published in 1855, when Whitman was 36 years old, the poet spent his whole life revising the poems in several editions.