Walt Whitman Poems

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
Or Shakespeare's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson's fair ladies,
...

BATHED in war's perfume--delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a
beautiful woman!
...

1
As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
...

AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
...

SOMETIMES with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love;
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love--the pay is certain, one
...

I DREAM'D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;
...

ON the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
...

AN old man's thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself
cannot.

...

HOW solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and sweaty--as the men file by where
I stand;
...

AMONG the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else--not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
...