Walt whitman song of myself full text. Walt Whitman 2022-10-13
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1863
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"Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman, first published in 1855 in his collection Leaves of Grass. It is considered one of Whitman's most famous and groundbreaking works, and is often seen as a representation of the United States and its values during the mid-19th century.
The poem is written in free verse, with no rhyme or meter, and is divided into 52 sections. It begins with the line "I celebrate myself, and sing myself," and from there, Whitman explores a wide range of themes, including nature, the human experience, democracy, and the self.
One of the most notable aspects of "Song of Myself" is Whitman's celebration of the individual. Throughout the poem, he encourages readers to embrace their own unique identities and experiences, and to find value and meaning in their own lives. He writes, "I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."
Whitman's use of free verse and the incorporation of various voices and perspectives into the poem also reflect his belief in democracy and the importance of diversity. He writes, "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes.)" This line has become one of the most famous in the poem, and is often seen as a representation of the diversity and complexity of the human experience.
In addition to celebrating the individual and the value of diversity, "Song of Myself" also explores the interconnectedness of all things. Whitman writes about the beauty and power of nature, and how it is intertwined with the human experience. He writes, "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars," and "I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,/How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,/And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,/And reach'd till you felt my beard."
Overall, "Song of Myself" is a powerful and transformative poem that encourages readers to embrace their own unique identities and to find value in the world around them. Its celebration of the individual, democracy, and the interconnectedness of all things has made it a timeless and enduring work of literature.
About "Song of Myself"
John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital, Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green. I know perfectly well my own egotism, Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
A word about the format. However, as Whitman suggests, the universal human self that transcends the temporary individual self encompasses the diversity of humanity. Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself, And the dark hush promulges as much as any. To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean, On his right cheek I put the family kiss, And in my soul I swear I never will deny him. I resign myself to you alsoāI guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you. We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak. You there, impotent, loose in the knees, Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you, Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, And any thing I have I bestow.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself. The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place, The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place, The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place. Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
Walt Whitman's Song of myself : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Retreating they had form'd in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks, Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance, Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone, They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners of war. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, he has undertaken cultural diplomacy missions in more than thirty countries. My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket, The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon, The young mother and old mother comprehend me, The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are, They and all would resume what I have told them. The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain, The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois'd on one leg on the string-piece, His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band, His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead, The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
WALT WHITMAN poem SONG OF MYSELF English TEXT Poetry Whitman
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. Does the daylight astonish? I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion, Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them? See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. Less the reminders of properties told my words, And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. I believe in those wing'd purposes, And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me, And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me. Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then? Even for the victorious, which are celebrated in section thirty-five, the tragic loss of life cannot be avoided in war.
Only three guns are in use, One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast, Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you. I tramp a perpetual journey, come listen all! We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water, On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. I do not press my fingers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray, The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, the purchaser higgling about the odd cent; The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly, The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips, The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, Miserable! My head slues round on my neck, Music rolls, but not from the organ, Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! Patriot, edited by Samuel E.
Will you speak before I am gone? The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, I peeringly view them from the top. Eleves, I salute you! You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also. Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! The Book of Eulogies. Easily written loose-finger'd chordsāI feel the thrum of your climax and close. Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? His writings have been translated into thirty languages and his journalism appears widely. List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. Did it make you ache so, leaving me? Retrieved May 2, 2016.
More classic poems by: Robert Burns home search. I hear the train'd soprano what work with hers is this? If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key, The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night, I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small. Is he from the Mississippi country? Still nodding night--mad naked summer night. An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies, It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last, My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, Happiness, which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day. Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
Walt Whitman: A Life. In at the conquer'd doors they crowd! Magnifying and applying come I, Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves, Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see, Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists, The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough, Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd, The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious; By my life-lumps! Whitman extends his juxtaposition of human life with seemingly inferior animal life by comparing himself, or the universal form of the self, to a clam. I ascend to the foretruck, I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest, We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough, Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty, The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions, The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them, We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged, We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution, Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd city, The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance, Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start. Sit a while dear son, Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence. Who has done his day's work? Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded, Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical, I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.
