Publisher: Poemhunter com The World's Poetry Archive

partly cover them--Beyond these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the
silence,
Alone I had thought--yet soon a troop gathers around me, 10
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or
neck,
They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive--thicker they come,
a great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens--tossing toward whoever is near me;
Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull'd off a live-oak in
Florida, as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me--and returns again,
never to separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades--this
Calamus-root shall, 20
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:
These, I, compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from
me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have--giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
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I will give of it--but only to them that love, as I myself am capable
of loving.
Walt Whitman
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Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
THICK-SPRINKLED bunting! Flag of stars!
Long yet your road, fateful flag!--long yet your road, and lined with
bloody death!
For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world!
All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy
banner!
--Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest born, to flaunt
unrival'd?
O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest
flags of kings,
Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol--run up above them all,
Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!
Walt Whitman
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Think Of The Soul
THINK of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul
somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such
things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon
you.
Think of the past;
I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you
and your times.
The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes;
All is inextricable--things, spirits, Nature, nations, you too--from
precedents you come.
Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede them;) 10
Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves,
felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas'd persons.
Think of the time when you were not yet born;
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.
Think of spiritual results,
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
objects pass into spiritual results.
Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman; 20
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?