Publisher: Poemhunter com The World's Poetry Archive

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In Former Songs
IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful
Life,
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.
And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death,
To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all!
(You that elude me most--refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)
I offer all to you.
'Tis not for nothing, Death,
I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone--embodying you,
In my new Democratic chants--keeping you for a close,
For last impregnable retreat--a citadel and tower, 10
For my last stand--my pealing, final cry.
Walt Whitman
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In Midnight Sleep
IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded--of that indescribable
look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm--and at night the moon so
unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather
the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long, long have they pass'd--faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure--or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time--But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream. 10
Walt Whitman
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In Paths Untrodden
IN paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish'd--from the pleasures,
profits, eruditions, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul;
Clear to me, now, standards not yet publish'd--clear to me that my
Soul,
That the Soul of the man I speak for, feeds, rejoices most in
comrades;
Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abash'd--for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would
not dare elsewhere, 10
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains
all the rest,
Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love,
Afternoon, this delicious Ninth-month, in my forty-first year,
I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.
Walt Whitman
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In The New Garden In All The Parts
IN the new garden, in all the parts,
In cities now, modern, I wander,
Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet,
Days, places, indifferent--though various, the same,
Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged,
Death indifferent--Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very
long ago?
For all that, I may now be watching you here, this moment;
For the future, with determined will, I seek--the woman of the
future,
You, born years, centuries after me, I seek.
Walt Whitman
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Inscription
SMALL is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest--namely,
One's-Self--that wondrous thing a simple, separate person.
That, for the use of the New World, I sing.
Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy
alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse;--I say the Form
complete is worthier far. The female equal with the male, I
sing,
Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self. I speak the word of the modern,
the word En-Masse:
My Days I sing, and the Lands--with interstice I knew of hapless War.
O friend whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel
through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return.
And thus upon our journey link'd together let us go.
Walt Whitman