You sea! I resign myself to you also-I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me.We must have a turn...

re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency,...

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

My words itch at your ears till you understand them

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.”[Give me the splendid silent sun]

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,The hundred & fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.

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...

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,...

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...

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

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...

TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward...

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!...

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

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,...

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...

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

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...

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...

When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting,...

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

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.You must travel it by yourself.It is not far. It is within reach.Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not...

Of Equality–as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself–as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

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...

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.

I see great things in baseball.

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric productAnd look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

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...

I Think it is lost…..but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost .The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, I swear to you they will understand you and justify you, The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all...

O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who...

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.Healthy, free, the world before me.The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune.Henceforth, I...

Songs of myselfI am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I...

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 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,Stuffed with the stuff that...

Poets to ComePOETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,Arouse! Arousefor you must...

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

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

Resist much, obey little.

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.

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.

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...

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

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...

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.

I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition;They do not...

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.