Walt Whitman Quotes

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,

Easter will soon be here. Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be his natural paradise.

Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached

Tiap bayangan memiliki nama;
Saat memikirkan semua yang kumiliki, aku gelisah,
Kudengar rumor tentang kemasyhuran.
Bukan untuk kebanggaan, melainkan hanya kehinaan,
Bayangan berubah menjadi tulang.

(Allen Ginsberg)

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d, All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely Justified, Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet, (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,) Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

O LIVING always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am
content;)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn
and look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses
behind.

The clock indicates the moment - but what does eternity indicate?

Mikor e kései órán a szürkületben egyedül üldögélek s az égő tölgy lángja lobog,
Régmúlt háborús jeleneteken elmélkedem – számtalan, eltemetett ismeretlen katonán,
Az üres neveken, olyanokon, melyeket nem írtak sem égre, sem tengerre, a vissza-nem-térteken,
A csata utáni kurta békén, zord, hantoló osztagokon,
Egész Amerikából, Északról, Délről, Keletről, Nyugatról, ahonnan jöttek, mély árkokba összegyűjtött halottakon:
Az erdős Maine-en, Új Anglia farmjain, a termékeny Pennsylvanián, Illinoison, Ohion,
A mérhetetlen Nyugaton, Virginián, Délen, Carolinákon, Texason,
(Még itt is, szobám árnyékaiban és homályos fényei közt, a halk, lobogó lángokban,
Ismét látom a délceg, bátran támadó sorokat, amint felmagasodnak – hallom a hadseregek ritmikus menetét;)
Nektek énekelem most ezt a dalt, mindnyájatoknak – ti meg-nem-örökített nevek – a háború sötét hagyatéka,
Villanjon fel ebben a dalban a régen elhanyagolt kötelesség – bennem összegyűlt misztikus névsorotok,
Minden nevet felidézek a sötétségből és a halottak hamvaiból,
Mélyen a szívembe véslek ezentúl benneteket, hogy sokáig emlékezzem,
A ti ismeretlen neveitek misztikus soraira, akár Északról, akár Délről jöttetek,
E szürkületi dalban éltek ti tovább, szeretettel bebalzsamozva.

You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me”

You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;
You tokens diminute and lorn — (not now the flush of May,
or July clover-bloom — no grain of August now;)
You pallid banner-staves — you pennants valueless — you overstay’d of
time,
Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
The faithfulest — hardiest — last.

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity

they may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me.

We Two Boys Together Clinging We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

"the old name absorbs into me — MANNAHATTA, "the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters.