Walt Whitman

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

“Quédate hoy conmigo,vive conmigo un día y una nochey te mostraré el origen de todos los poemas.”

“Me celebro y me canto a mí mismo.Y lo que yo diga ahora de mí, lo digo de ti,porque lo que yo tengo lo tienes túy cada átomo de mi cuerpo es tuyo también.”

“I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther.”

“Studying life, eh! Let him take care, studying human life is looking at the stars. If you look too close, there is a dazzle.”

“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”

“poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you”

“I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.”

“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and 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.[From the preface to Leaves Grass]”

“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.”

“It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so manygenerations hence,Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and thebright flow, I was refresh'd,Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swiftcurrent, I stood yet was hurried,Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and thethick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.”

“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.”

“And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm me”

“Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. [from "Song of the Open Road"]”

“The past and the present wilt. I have fill’d them, emptied them,And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.”

“A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars”

“WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?”

“In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.”

“You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life”

“When the materials are ready, the architects shall appear.”

“Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!”

“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

“Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,As souls only understand souls.”

“Se è tardi a trovarmi, insisti, se non ci sono in un posto, cerca in un altro, perché io son fermo da qualche parte ad aspettare te.”

“(I know, it's a poem but oh well).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 any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, 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 sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best-- mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; 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; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?”

“When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d,And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy,But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores,I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy.”

“I am not contain'd between my hat and my boots.”

“Solitary the thrush,The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding thesettlements,Sings by himself a song.Song of the bleeding throat!”

“If you see a good deal remarkable in me I see just as much remarkable in you.”

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then? I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.”

“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 launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.And you O my soul where you stand,Surrounded, detached, 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.”

“Re-examine all that you have been told.”

“Tenderly, be not impatient, (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, Strong is your hold O love.)”

“...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment, and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”

“Forth from the war emerging,a book I have made, the words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything, a book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, but you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.”

“One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, / And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten / million years, / I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.”

“When I give, I give myself”

“All space, all time, The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use, Fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons...”

“Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.”

“Your true soul and body appear before me. 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 instrinsically in yourself. 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. I pursue you where none else has pursued you. Conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me. I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully 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.”

“«A leitura está cheia de aromas.»”

“Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents, Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising, See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.”

“I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.”

“And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves, Tenderly will I use you curling grass,It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps, And here you are the mothers' laps."- Song of Myself: 6”

“CITY OF THE WORLD (FOR ALL RACES ARE HERE, ALL THE LANDS OF THE EARTH MAKE CONTRIBUTIONS HERE), CITY OF THE SEA! CITY OF WHARVES AND STORES - CITY OF TALL FACADES OF MARBLE AND IRON! PROUD AND PASSIONATE CITY - METTLESOME, MAD, EXTRAVAGANT CITY!”

“When I Read the Book"When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)”

“I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost .The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.”

“Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.”

“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 rights that others possess the same.”

“ThoughtOf equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chancesand rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.”