“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.” — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay;” — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Song of Myself is a new kind of poem , which is shocked, puzzled, amused, amazed all the average readers, but it… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language,… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“I believe in the flesh and the appetites; Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals... he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Perhaps the efforts of the true poets, founders, religions, literatures, all ages, have been, and ever will be, our time and times… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Songs of myself Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack one… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy,… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying,… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Song of myself A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Song of myself Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! Already you see I have escaped from you. For it is… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“(I know, it's a poem but oh well). Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“TO FOREIGN LANDS. I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors… . The great poets are also to be… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! O lavish,… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them, The… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Human bodies are words, myriads of words, (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems,… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
If the United States haven't grown poets, on any scale of grandeur, it is certain that they import, print, and read more… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
O lands! O all so dear to me - what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Comerado, this is no book,Who touches this, touches a man,(Is it night? Are we here alone?)It is I you hold, and who holds you,I… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
I think I could always live with animals. The more you're around people, the more you love animals. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
“I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the… — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road. — Walt Whitman Copy Share Image
