Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitmanwas an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 May 1819
CountryUnited States of America
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side...The Bending forward and backward of the rowers...
I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.
For all these new and evolutionary facts, meanings, purposes, new poetic messages, new forms and expressions, are inevitable.
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, All all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward and outward and forever outward.
What has miserable, inefficient Mexico...to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth ever afterward resumes its liberty.
I do not doubt but the majest and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world; I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than I have supposed.
If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with, it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall - indeed a crucifixion day - that it did not conquer him - that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it.
Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.
It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them. And perhaps it is the case that the greatest artists live and die, the world and themselves alike ignorant what they possess.
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
Americans should know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.
O the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged - it darts like lightning!