Walt Whitman, Poet and Democrat

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William Brown, 1884 - 52 pages

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Page 40 - I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
Page 40 - The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Page 38 - With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands - and this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird...
Page 46 - Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
Page 38 - RECONCILIATION WORD over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world ; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin — I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Page 9 - When I pass to and fro, different latitudes, different seasons, beholding the crowds of the great cities, "New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore — when I mix with these interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons — at the idea of this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls upon me.
Page 13 - Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as, their poets shall.
Page 40 - I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Page 36 - WHEN lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.
Page 13 - Not swarming States, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man — nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the cheapest — namely, from its own soul.

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