Give me such shows–give me the streets of Manhattan!

The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors… . The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor… . How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by...

What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end...

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of...

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,And accrue what I hear into myself…and let sound contribute toward me.

My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth.I have look’d for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you…

For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…. there are millions of suns left,You shall no longer take things at second or third hand…. nor look through the eyes of the dead…. nor feed on the spectres in...

Peace is always beautiful.

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

My words itch at your ears till you understand them

To drive free, to love free, to court destruction with taunts. One brief house of madness and joy!

I have learned that to be with those I like is enough

Argue not concerning God,…re-examine all that you have been told at church or school or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul…

O the joy of my spirit–it is uncaged–it darts like lightning!It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,I will have thousands of globes and all time.

Song of myselfSmile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset–earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and...

Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

Song of myselfI am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine, One of the Nation of...

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems

this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless,away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lessondone,thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering thethemes thou lovest best,night, sleep, death and the stars.

I act as the tongue of you,… tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose……of silence?

One’s-Self I Sing One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology 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 equally with the Male I sing. Of Life...

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

When I Read the Book”When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think...

Oh captain my captain

Se è tardi a trovarmi, insisti, se non ci sono in un posto, cerca in un altro, perché io son fermo da qualche parte ad aspettare te.

I tramp the perpetual journeyMy signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no philosophy, I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon...

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he...

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his impossible standards.

And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves, Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon...

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good...

I have perceived that to be with those i like is enough,To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly roundhis or her neck for a moment, what is...

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.All seems beautiful to me.Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side...

Song of MyselfI have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more...

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.

WE two boys together clinging,One the other never leaving,Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,threatening,Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, onthe turf or the sea-beach dancing,Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes...

Resist much, obey little.

Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.