Walt Whitman Poems

BEAT! beat! drums!--Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows--through doors--burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
...

AGES and ages, returning at intervals,
Undestroy'd, wandering immortal,
Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,
...

ARE you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning--I am surely far different from what you
suppose;
...

IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded--of that indescribable
look;
...

from Memories of President Lincoln

1
...

OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
...

ABOARD, at a ship's helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.

...

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
...

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,
...

AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume--what I said to you in the open air I
resume:
...