You who celebrate bygones!Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself;Who have treated of man as the…

Courage yet! my brother or my sister!Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv’d, whatever occurs;That is nothing, that is quell’d by one or two failures,…

Be composed, be at ease with me, I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature;Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;Not…

Did YOU ask dulcet rhymes from me?Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?Why…

Here, take this gift!I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or General,One who should serve the good old cause, the great Idea, the progress…

Of Public Opinion; Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!) Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to…

I Of ownership, As if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself.  II…

Of these years I sing,How they pass and have pass’d, through convuls’d pains as through parturitions;How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure…

Of what I write from myself, As if that were not the resum�; Of Histories, As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the…

Of equality, As if it harm�d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself, As if it were not indispensable to my own…