The First Dandelion

THE FIRST DANDELION

from Leaves of Grass (1892) by Walt Whitman

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass -- innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,

The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Image by Markus Koch from Pixabay

The Love of Life

From section 48 of "Song of Myself"

in the 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Read "Walt Whitman's Love of Life" >>>

What Walt Whitman Thought of Justice

THOUGHT
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Of Justice -- as if Justice could be any thing but the same ample law,
     expounded by natural judges and saviors,
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.


Source: Leaves of Grass (1892 edition) by Walt Whitman

Photo by George Collins Cox, 1887

Walt Whitman's Love of Life

In section 48 of his poem "Song of Myself" Walt Whitman wrote:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Over fifty years ago Evelyn Millis Duvall wrote, "Walt Whitman has been an able spokesman for the love of life. In his incomparable way, he sees life as the very signature of God when he says in [section 48 of] 'Song of Myself':"

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Photo credit: George Collins Cox, 1887

Poem Video: "Multitudes"

According to the Poetry Foundation, "It's difficult to overstate the impact that Walt Whitman has had on American poetry." The animated video "Multitudes," created by Manual Cinema and the Poetry Foundation, "explores eight segments of Whitman's central poem, 'Song of Myself,' featuring readings by three contemporary poets -- Kaveh Akbar, Duriel E. Harris, and Yusef Komunyakaa -- and innovative puppetry by Manual Cinema."

Watch the video >>

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Walt Whitman: Citizen Poet

In honor of Walt Whitman's 200th birthday, the Poetry Foundation presents Walt Whitman: Citizen Poet. Produced and directed by Haydn Reiss and Zinc Films, this short film introduces an American original whose influence on contemporary poets remains vital, and whose work helped define a young democracy's promise and its bold, independent identity. Whitman's poetry unites us in freedom and our compassionate, common humanity.
     --Poetry Foundation, February 20, 2019

Watch the video >>

American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

with a (fake) butterfly

A Glimpse

From Leaves of Grass (1892)
by Walt Whitman

A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Abraham Lincoln, Born February 12, 1809

On this day in 1809, according to the Associated Press, "Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in a log cabin in Hardin (now LaRue) County, Kentucky." Here are a poem and two quotations about Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Photograph by Alexander Gardner

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BORN FEB. 12, 1809
by Walt Whitman

Publish'd Feb. 12, 1888

To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer -- a pulse of thought,
To memory of Him -- to birth of Him.


Two presidential quotations about Abraham Lincoln:

Mr. Lincoln has come and gone. . . . He has been raising a respectable pair of dark-brown whiskers, which decidedly improve his looks, but no appendage can ever render him remarkable for beauty.
     JAMES A. GARFIELD
     in a letter to Mrs. Garfield
     February 16, 1861

Lincoln was a very normal man with very normal gifts, but all upon a great scale, all knit together in loose and natural form, like the great frame in which he moved and dwelt.
     WOODROW WILSON
     in a speech in Chicago, Illinois
     February 2,1909

"Sounds of the Winter" by Walt Whitman

SOUNDS OF THE WINTER
from Leaves of Grass (1892)
by Walt Whitman

Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains -- many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train -- from nearer field, barn, house,
The whispering air -- even the mute crops, garner'd apples, corn,
Children's and women's tones -- rhythm of many a farmer and of flail,
An old man's garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,
Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Prayer of Columbus

On this day in 1492 (according to the Old Style Calendar), Christopher Columbus's expedition arrived in the present-day Bahamas. Here is the poem that Walt Whitman wrote, in the first person, about Christopher Columbus. To read an article about this poem, click here.


PRAYER OF COLUMBUS
from Leaves of Grass (1892)
by Walt Whitman

A batter'd, wreck'd old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island's edge,
Venting a heavy heart.

I am too full of woe!
Haply I may not live another day;
I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep,
Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee,
Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee,
Report myself once more to Thee.

Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;
Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth,
Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations,
Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee,
Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them,
Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,
In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining not,
Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee.

All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee,
My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee,
Sailing the deep or journeying the land for Thee;
Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leaving results to Thee.

O I am sure they really came from Thee,
The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will,
The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words,
A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep,
These sped me on.

By me and these the work so far accomplish'd,
By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd,
By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known.

The end I know not, it is all in Thee,
Or small or great I know not -- haply what broad fields, what lands,
Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I know,
Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee,
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools,
Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there.

One effort more, my altar this bleak sand;
That Thou O God my life hast lighted,
With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee,
Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;
For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees,
Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.

My terminus near,
The clouds already closing in upon me,
The voyage balk'd the course disputed, lost,
I yield my ships to Thee.

My hands, my limbs grow nerveless,
My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd,
Let the old timbers part, I will not part,
I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,
Thee, Thee at least I know.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?
What do I know of life? what of myself?
I know not even my own work past or present,
Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me,
Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition,
Mocking, perplexing me.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

"A Voice from Death" by Walt Whitman

On this day in 1889, according to the Associated Press, "some 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, perished when the South Fork Dam collapsed, sending 20 million tons of water rushing through the town." To read the poem that Walt Whitman, who was born on this day in 1819, wrote about that cataclysm, click here.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"The Voice of the Rain" by Walt Whitman

Here is a poem that Walt Whitman wrote about what he called "the Poem of Earth."


THE VOICE OF THE RAIN

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear," wrote American poet Walt Whitman in his poem "I Hear America Singing." To read that poem of his in its entirety, click here.

Walt Whitman

"I Sing the Body Electric" by Walt Whitman

Read this classic poem: I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

American poet

"Unfolded Out of the Folds" by Walt Whitman

"A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity -- but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman." So reads a line in the poem "Unfolded Out of the Folds" by Walt Whitman, who was born on this day in 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York. To read that poem in its entirety, click here.

Walt Whitman, 1819-1892

"Out of May's Shows Selected" by Walt Whitman

Here is a short poem by Walt Whitman for spring, the season of renewal.


OUT OF MAY'S SHOWS SELECTED

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.


Source: The Language of Spring: Poems for the Season of Renewal (2003), Selected by Robert Atwan, with an Introduction by Maxine Kumin

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"Making the Words Ours" by Kathleen Rooney

Read Making the Words Ours by Kathleen Rooney: A compelling new video project takes Whitman to the streets of Alabama.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

American poet

A quotation from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

A quotation from Section 24 of "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

American poet

"The Sobbing of the Bells" by Walt Whitman

On this day in 1881, according to the Associated Press, "the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, died [two and a half] months after being shot by Charles Guiteau; Chester Alan Arthur became president." Here is a poem that Walt Whitman wrote about Garfield's death.


THE SOBBING OF THE BELLS

[Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]

The sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,
The slumbers rouse, the rapport of the People,
(Full well they know that message in the darkness,
Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the sad reverberations,)
The passionate toll and clang -- city to city, joining, sounding, passing,
Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

A murder story by Walt Whitman

"One Wicked Impulse!" is a murder story by (in the words of Mark Van Doren) "the most original and passionate American poet" -- Walt Whitman. The story was first published in book form in Walt Whitman's Specimen Days & Collect (Philadelphia: Rees Welsh & Co., 1882-83), and it was reprinted in the January 1954 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Read Walt Whitman's murder story "One Wicked Impulse!" I ask that you pay particular attention to the ending of the story -- to the very last paragraph. When you have finished reading Walt Whitman's murder story, read the paragraph below.

If you were "shocked" by the last paragraph of Walt Whitman's murder story, read "One Wicked Impulse! (1845)," a commentary by Patrick McGuire on that story.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

at about 50