Aboard at a Ship's Helm

ABOARD at a ship's helm,

A young steersman steering with care.

Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,

An ocean bell-O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs

ringing,

Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.

For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud

admonition,

The bows turn, the frightened ship tacking speeds away

under her gray sails,

The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth

speeds away gayly and safe.

But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!

Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging,

voyaging.

Walt Whitman (1867)

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

WHEN I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1865)

O Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain, our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

        But O heart! heart! heart!

          O the bleeding drops of red,

            Where on the deck my Captain lies,

              Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

        Here Captain! dear father!

          The arm beneath your head!

            It is some dream that on the deck,

              You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

        Exult O shores and ring O bells!

          But I with mournful tread,

            Walk the deck my Captain lies,

              Fallen Cold and Dead.

Walt Whitman (1865)

A Clear Midnight

THIS is the hour, O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best:

Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

Walt Whitman (1881)

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A NOISELESS patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,

It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Walt Whitman (1871)

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 open the doors O soul.

Tenderly--be not impatient,

(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh,

Strong is your hold O love.)

Walt Whitman (1871)

On the Beach at Night

                ON the beach at night,

                Stands a child with her father,

                Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,

Amid a transparent clear band of ether yet left in the east,

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,

And nigh at hand, only a very little above,

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,

Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,

Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,

Weep not, my darling,

With these kisses let me remove your tears,

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious;

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Somewhere there is,

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,

Or the radient sisters of the Pleiades.

Walt Whitman (1871)

Miracles

WHY, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know of 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 trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

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;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships with the men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman (1856)

I Hear America Singing

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it whould be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The woodcutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Walt Whitman (1860)

Cavalry Crossing A Ford

A LINE in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,

They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun--hark to the musical clank,

Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink,

Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles,

Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford--while,

Scarlet and blue and snowy white,

The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.

Walt Whitman (1865)

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

I SEE before me now a traveling army halting,

Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,

Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,

Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily seen,

The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the mountain,

The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering,

And over all the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, Studded, breaking out, the eternal stars.

Walt Whitman (1865)

By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame

By the bivouac's fitful flame

A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow--but first I note,

The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and the woods' dim outline,

The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,

Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,

The shrubs and trees (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me),

While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,

Of life and death, of home and the past an loved, and of those that are far away;

A solemn and slow procession there as I it on the ground,

By the bivouac's fitful flame.

Walt Whitman (1865)

Had I the Choice

HAD I the choice to tally greatest bards,

To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,

Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,

Or Shakespeare's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson's fair ladies,

Meter or wit the best, or choice conceit to weild in perfect rhyme, delight of singers;

These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,

Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,

Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,

And leave its odor there.

Walt Whitman

Long, Too Long America

LONG, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

Walt Whitman (1865)

Hush'd Be the Camps Today

May 4, 1865

HUSH'D be the camps today,

And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,

And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,

Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts,

Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events,

Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing poet in our name,

Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there,

Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,

For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

Walt Whitman (1865)

COME, SAID MY SOUL

COME, SAID MY SOUL,

SUCH VERSES FOR MY BODY LET US WRITE, (FOR WE ARE ONE),

THAT SHOULD I AFTER DEATH INVISIBLY RETURN,

OR, LONG, LONG HENCE, IN OTHER SPHERES,

THERE TO SOME GROUP OF MATES THE CHANTS RESUMING,

(TALLYING EARTH'S SOIL, TREES, WINDS, TUMULTUOUS WAVES,)

EVER WITH PLEAS'D SMILE I MAY KEEP ON,

EVER AND EVER YT THE VERSES OWNING--AS, FIRST, I HERE AND NOW,

SIGNING FOR SOUL AND B0DY, SET TO THEM MY NAME,

                           WALT WHITMAN

Inscription to Leaves of Grass (1876)

To a Locomotive In Winter

THEE for my recitative,

Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,

Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,

Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,

Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,

Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,

Thy great protruding headlight fix'd in front,

Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,

The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack.

Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,

Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,

Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careening;

Type of the modern--emblem of motion and power--pulse of the continent,

For once come serve the Muse and and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,

With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,

By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,

By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty!

Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music,thy swinging lamps at night,

Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,

Law of thyself complete, thine old track firmly holding,

(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)

Thy trills and shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,

Launch'd o'er the praries wide, across the lakes,

To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

Walt Whitman (1876)

Reconciliation