Walt Whitman Poems

POETS 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
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I SEE the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe- hush'd, I study them long and long.
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ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the
pond-side,
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I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark
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DESPAIRING cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night,
The sad voice of Death--the call of my nearest lover, putting forth,
alarmed, uncertain,
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WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be
utterly lost;
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O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
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ON journeys through the States we start,
(Ay, through the world--urged by these songs,
Sailing henceforth to every land--to every sea;)
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FACING west, from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the
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ONLY themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves,
As Souls only understand Souls.
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