We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd. And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun. Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I. I resist any thing better than my own diversity. Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in. Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it. Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent. (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place, The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their, The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place. His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and. His crudity is an exceeding great stench, but it is America. I take my place among you as much as among any. I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face. Listener up there! Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back, Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with, Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad dis-, Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish koboo. I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured, I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all! The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big, The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and. Earth! I do not snivel that snivel the world over. I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers. I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average. There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps. Is he from the Mississippi country? Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. These come to me days and nights and go from me again. See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that. You are also asking me questions and I hear you. Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg. The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them. I do not press my fingers across my mouth. If our colors are struck and the fighting done? I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with. Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-, Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and, The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me. And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields. Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the whitewash'd church, Pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preach-. The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though. The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manu-. And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green. Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whitman's mastery of the catalog has caused critics to praise his endless generative powers, his seeming ability to cycle through hundreds of images while avoiding repetition and producing astounding variety and newness. The last publication consisted of over 400 poems. The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to, They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bend-. Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me. I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his, She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight. I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid. And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation. and I am embodied in them. And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own. A year later, in 1856, Whitman released a second edition of the book with a total of thirty-three poems. Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, (They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and. Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of. I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. Whitman uses anaphora to mimic biblical syntax and give his work a weighty, epic feeling, but also to create the hypnotic rhythms that take the place of more formal verse. Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten. Whitman was a poet bubbling with energy and burdened with sensations, and his poetic utterances reveal his innovations. And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something, And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty. Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation. and what is love? I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting. Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the shadows. He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low. My words itch at your ears till you understand them. I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice. Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable. Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game, Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by my, The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and, My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from. Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets. I do not know what is untried and afterward. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night. In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long. And if each and all be aware I sit content. Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear. The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching, (They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with, I hear the violoncello, ('tis the My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait. My captain lash'd fast with his own hands. With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image. And of the rights of them the others are down upon. Resources | A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. Since iambics closely mimic the patterns of natural speech and are pleasing to the ear, Whitman used them for sections of his poems, without exclusively writing metered verse. Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh. Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them? And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. 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, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate. She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree. I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist.