Quotes from Walt Whitman

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable.

The Last Invocation At the last, tenderly, From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house, From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors, Let me be wafted. Let me glide noiselessly forth; With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper, Set ope the doors, O Soul! Tenderly! be not impatient! (Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh! Strong is your hold, O love.)

And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers… and the women my sisters and lovers

Or may-be one who is puzzled at me. As if I were not puzzled at myself!

The city sleeps and the country sleeps, The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn

La hojita más pequeña de hierba nos enseña que la muerte no existe; que si alguna vez existió, fue sólo para producir la vida.

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true soul and body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. -from To You

Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the       imperious waves

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land, With love, with love.

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields, Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my mate no more, no more with me! We two together no more. -from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism -personifying ill unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) -only one of the wolfish earls so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works -works in some respects greater than anything else ill recorded literature.

But I am not the sea nor the red sun, I am not the wind with girlish laughter, Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes, Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death, But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land, Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings, And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Aloft there flapping and flapping.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem

And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young

I exist as I am. That is enough

I do not snivel that snivel the world over, That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth, That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.

I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing.

Aquel que camina una sola legua sin amor, camina amortajado hacia su propio funeral.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?" "Nature remains.