A Riddle Song. in
General
THAT which eludes this verse and any verse,
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,
Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,
Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted,
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d,
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.
Indifferently, ’mid public, private haunts, in solitude,
Behind the mountain and the wood,
Companion of the city’s busiest streets, through the assemblage,
It and its radiations constantly glide.
In looks of fair unconscious babes,
Or strangely in the coffin’d dead,
Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,
As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,
Hiding yet lingering.
Two little breaths of words comprising it.
Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.
How ardently for it!
How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it!
How many travelers started from their homes and ne’er return’d!
How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!
What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it!
How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it—and shall be to the end!
How all heroic martyrdoms to it!
How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!
How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and land, have drawn
men’s
eyes,
Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs,
Or midnight’s silent glowing northern lights unreachable.
Haply God’s riddle it, so vague and yet so certain,
The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it,
And heaven at last for it.
By
Walt Whitman
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Other poems by Walt Whitman:
- 1861.
- A Boston Ballad, 1854.
- A Broadway Pageant.
- A Carol of Harvest, for 1867 .
- A Child’s Amaze.
- A Clear Midnight.
- A Farm-Picture.
- A Hand-Mirror.
- A Leaf for Hand in Hand.
- A Noiseless Patient Spider.
- A Paumanok Picture.
- A Promise to California.
- A Riddle Song.
- A Sight in Camp.
- A Song.
- A Woman Waits for Me.
- Aboard at a Ship’s Helm.
- Adieu to a Soldier.
- After the Sea-Ship.
- Ages and Ages, Returning at Intervals.
- Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats.
- All is Truth.
- American Feuillage.
- Among the Multitude.
- An Army Corps on the March.
- An Old Man’s Thought of School.
- Apostroph.
- Are You the New person, drawn toward Me?
- As At Thy Portals Also Death.
- As Consequent, Etc.
- As I lay with Head in your Lap, Camerado.
- As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days.
- As I Watch’d the Ploughman Ploughing.
- As the Time Draws Nigh.
- Ashes of Soldiers.
- Assurances.
- Base of all Metaphysics, The.
- Bathed in War’s Perfume.
- Beat! Beat! Drums!
- Beautiful Women.
- Beginners.
- Beginning my Studies.
- Behavior.
- Behold this Swarthy Face.
- Bivouac on a Mountain Side.
- Brother of All, with Generous Hand.
- By Broad Potomac’s Shore.
- By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame.
- Camps of Green.
- Carol of Occupations.
- Carol of Words.
- Cavalry Crossing a Ford.
- Centenarian’s Story, The.
- Chanting the Square Deific.
- City Dead-House, The.
- City of Orgies.
- City of Ships.
- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.
- Dalliance of the Eagles, The.
- Darest Thou Now, O Soul.
- Debris.
- Delicate Cluster.
- Dirge for Two Veterans.
- Drum-Taps.
- Earth! my Likeness!
- Eidólons.
- Elemental Drifts.
- Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States.
- Excelsior.
- Facing West from California’s Shores.
- Fast Anchor’d, Eternal, O Love.
- For Him I Sing.
- France, the 18th year of These States.
- From Far Dakota’s Cañons.
- From My Last Years.
- From Paumanok Starting.
- From Pent-up Aching Rivers.
- Full of Life, Now.
- Germs.
- Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun.
- Gods.
- Great are the Myths.
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour.
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me.
- Here, Sailor.
- Hours Continuing Long.
- How Solemn as One by One.
- Hush’d be the Camps To-day.
- I am He that Aches with Love.
- I Hear America Singing.
- I hear it was Charged against Me.
- I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing.
- I saw Old General at Bay.
- I Sing the Body Electric.
- I Sit and Look Out.
- I Thought I was not Alone.
- I was Looking a Long While.
- In Former Songs.
- In Midnight Sleep.
- In Paths Untrodden.
- In the New Garden in all the Parts.
- Indications, The.
- Inscription.
- Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
- Kosmos.
- Last Invocation, The.
- Laws for Creations.
- Lessons.
- Lo! Victress on the Peaks.
- Locations and Times.
- Long I Thought that Knowledge.
- Longings for Home.
- Look Down, Fair Moon.
- Manhattan Streets I Saunter’d, Pondering.
- Mannahatta.
- Me Imperturbe.
- Mediums.
- Miracles.
- Mother and Babe.
- My Picture-Gallery.
- Myself and Mine.
- Native Moments.
- Night on The Prairies.
- No Labor-Saving Machine.
- Not Heat Flames up and Consumes.
- Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only.
- Not My Enemies Ever Invade Me.
- Not Youth Pertains to Me.
- Now Finale to the Shore.
- O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig!
- O Captain! My Captain!
- O Living Always—Always Dying.
- O Star of France.
- O Sun of Real Peace.
- O You Whom I Often and Silently Come.
- Of Him I Love Day and Night.
- Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.
- Of the Visage of Things.
- Offerings.
- Old Ireland.
- On Journeys Through The States.
- On the Beach at Night, Alone.
- On the Beach at Night.
- One Hour to Madness and Joy.
- One Song, America, Before I Go.
- One Sweeps By.
- Or from that Sea of Time.
- Others may Praise what They Like.
- Out from Behind this Mask.
- Over the Carnage.
- Ox Tamer, The.
- Patroling Barnegat.
- Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of
- Perfections.
- Pioneers! O Pioneers!
- Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy.
- Poets to Come.
- Portals.
- Prairie States, The.
- Prayer of Columbus.
- Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love.
- Quicksand Years.
- Reconciliation.
- Recorders Ages Hence.
- Respondez!
- Rise, O Days.
- Roaming in Thought.
- Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone.
- Runner, The.
- Says.
- Scented Herbage of My Breast.
- Ship Starting, The.
- Shut Not Your Doors, &c.
- Sleepers, The.
- So Far and So Far, and on Toward the End.
- Sobbing of The Bells, The.
- Solid, Ironical, Rolling Orb.
- Sometimes with One I Love.
- Song at Sunset.
- Song for All Seas, All Ships.
- Song of the Broad-Axe.
- Song of the Universal.
- Souvenirs of Democracy.
- Spain 1873–’74.
- Sparkles from The Wheel.
- Spirit That Form’d This Scene.
- Spirit whose Work is Done.
- Spontaneous Me.
- Starting from Paumanok.
- States!
- Still, though the One I Sing.
- Tears.
- Tests.
- That Music Always Round Me.
- There was a Child went Forth.
- These Carols.
- These, I, Singing in Spring.
- Thick-Sprinkled Bunting.
- Think of the Soul.
- This Compost.
- This Day, O Soul.
- This Dust was Once the Man.
- This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful.
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling.
- Thou Reader.
- Thought.
- Thoughts.
- To a Certain Civilian.
- To a Common Prostitute.
- To a foil’d European Revolutionaire.
- To a Historian.
- To a Locomotive in Winter.
- To a President.
- To a Pupil.
- To a Stranger.
- To Foreign Lands.
- To Him that was Crucified.
- To Old Age.
- To One Shortly to Die.
- To Oratists.
- To the East and to the West.
- To the Garden the World.
- To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod.
- To the Man-of-War-Bird.
- To The States.
- To Thee, Old Cause!
- To Think of Time.
- To You.
- Torch, The.
- Trickle, Drops.
- Turn, O Libertad.
- Two Rivulets.
- Unfolded Out of the Folds.
- Unnamed Lands.
- Untold Want, The.
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field.
- Virginia—The West.
- Visor’d.
- Voices.
- Wandering at Morn.
- Warble for Lilac-Time.
- We Two Boys Together Clinging.
- We Two—How Long We were Fool’d.
- Weave in, Weave in, My Hardy Life.
- What am I, After All?
- What Best I See In Thee.
- What General has a Good Army.
- What Place is Besieged?
- What think You I take my Pen in Hand?
- What Weeping Face.
- When I heard at the Close of the Day.
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer.
- When I peruse the Conquer’d Fame.
- When I read the Book.
- Whispers of Heavenly Death.
- Who is now Reading This?
- Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
- Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand.
- With All Thy Gifts.
- With Antecedents.
- World Below the Brine, The.
- Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60.
- Year that Trembled.
- Years of the Modern.
- You Felons on Trial in Courts.
