WALT WHITMAN

Walt Whitman 

(1819–1892) 

This page is for my favorite passages

From the writings of Uncle Walt
I'll be adding to this page periodically

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If any thing is sacred, 

the human body is sacred.

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(from the preface to his first edition of Leaves of Grass)

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, 

have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, 

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."

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A Sun-Bath–Nakedness

"Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me… Nature was naked, and I was also… Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! - ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent.

Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. (Probably the whole curriculum of first-class philosophy, beauty, heroism, form, illustrated by the old Hellenic race—the highest height and deepest depth known to civilization in those departments—came from their natural and religious idea of Nakedness."

~Walt Whitman

(“A Sun-Bath–Nakedness” in “Specimen Days”)

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Native Moments

25. from Leaves of Grass (1900)

NATIVE moments! when you come upon me

—Ah you are here now! 

Give me now libidinous joys only! 

Give me the drench of my passions! 

Give me life coarse and rank! 

To-day, I go consort with nature’s darlings

—to-night too; 

I am for those who believe in loose delights

—I share the midnight orgies of young men;

I dance with the dancers, 

and drink with the drinkers; 

The echoes ring with our indecent calls; 

I take for my love some prostitute

—I pick out some low person for my dearest friend, 

He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate

—he shall be one condemn’d by others 

for deeds done;

I will play a part no longer

—Why should I exile myself from my companions?

O you shunn’d persons! I at least do not shun you, 

I come forthwith in your midst—I will be your poet, 

I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

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As for me, I know nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under the trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love,
Or sleep in bed at night with any one I love,
Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon...
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, 
Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring...

What stranger miracles are there?

~*~

To You
by Walt Whitman

 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.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you 

   be my poem,

I whisper with my lips close to your ear,

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better

   than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,

I should have made my way straight to you long ago, 

I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted

   nothing but you.

   

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, 

None has understood you, but I understand you, 

None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to

   yourself,

None but has found you imperfect, I only find no

   imperfection in you,

None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will

   never consent to subordinate you,

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better,

   God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

   

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-

   figure of all,

From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of 

   gold-color’d light,

But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its 

   nimbus of gold-color’d light,

From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it

   streams, effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon

   yourself all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

What you have done returns already in mockeries, 

(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in

   mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you,

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,

I pursue you where none else has pursued you,

Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the 

   accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or

   from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,

The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if

   these balk others they do not balk me,

The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, 

   premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied 

   in you,

There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good 

   is in you,

No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,

No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits 

   for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like 

   carefully to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than

   I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at an hazard! 

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, 

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are

   immense and interminable as they,

These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of 

   apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or 

   mistress over them,

Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, 

   pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing 

   sufficiency,

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, 

   whatever you are promulges itself,

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, 

   nothing is scanted,

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what 

   you are picks its way.

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“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.” 

~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: The Death-Bed Edition

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The Swimming Hole by Thomas Eakins

#11 from Song of Myself (1892 version)
by Walt Whitman

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

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