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
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed 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 clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth! Smile, for your lover comes!
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
More and more too, the old name absorbs into me. Mannahatta, 'the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.' How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
I may be as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room, how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
O lands! O all so dear to me -- what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is.
When I heard the learned 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, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much a