Walt Whitman Quotes

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night Youth, large, lusty, loving — youth full of grace, force, fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

The narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.

Do not descend amongst professors or capitalists.

Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Loafe with me on the grass.... loose the stop from
your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want.... not custom
or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer
morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently
turned over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
plunged your
tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till
you held my
feet.

"Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me."

-from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly — see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon — and from such a beginning!

Quédate hoy conmigo, vive conmigo un día y una noche y te mostraré el origen de todos los poemas. Tendrás entonces todo cuanto hay de grande en la Tierra y en el Sol (existen además millones de soles más allá) y nada tomarás ya nunca de segunda ni de tercera mano, ni mirarás más por los ojos de los muertos, ni te nutrirás con el espectro de los libros.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and Increase upon myself, the latter I translate into new tongue.

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation.

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada, Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,
I ate with you, and slept with you — your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass — you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you — I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I am to wait — I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and
bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.

Although this poetry collection was first published in 1855, when Whitman was 36 years old, the poet spent his whole life revising the poems in several editions.