Apostroph. in
General
O MATER! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!
O race of the future! O women!
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!
O native power only! O beauty!
O yourself! O God! O divine average!
O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slumberers!
O arouse! the dawn bird’s throat sounds shrill! Do you not hear the cock crowing?
O, as I walk’d the beach, I heard the mournful notes foreboding a tempest—the
low,
oft-repeated shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;
O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;—O you sailors! O ships! make quick
preparation!
O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle!
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your spoils;)
O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world should prove indeed a sham, a sell!)
O I believe there is nothing real but America and freedom!
O to sternly reject all except Democracy!
O imperator! O who dare confront you and me?
O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which builds for mankind!
O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the Mexican sea!
O all, all inseparable—ages, ages, ages!
O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for any reason whatever!
O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death!
O you strong with iron and wood! O Personality!
O the village or place which has the greatest man or woman! even if it be only a few
ragged
huts;
O the city where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men;
O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted!
O shapes arising! shapes of the future centuries!
O muscle and pluck forever for me!
O workmen and workwomen forever for me!
O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever for me!
O I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools!
O you coarse and wilful! I love you!
O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and sunny airs!
O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die!
O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be your born poet!
O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am your poet, because I am part of you;
O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents!
O vast preparations for These States! O years!
O what is now being sent forward thousands of years to come!
O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith!
To promulge real things! to journey through all The States!
O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated adoration!
O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers!
O for native songs! carpenter’s, boatman’s, ploughman’s songs!
shoemaker’s
songs!
O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic!
O what I, here, preparing, warble for!
O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his
height—and you too will ascend;
O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent, darting and burning;
O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light! with pouring glories!
O copious! O hitherto unequalled!
O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to dissever!
O my Soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless!
O centuries, centuries yet ahead!
O voices of greater orators! I pause—I listen for you
O you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority! I spring at once into your arms!
you I
most love!
O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you!
New history! New heroes! I project you!
Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on! sweep on!
O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet!
O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet!
O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can stand!
O present! I return while yet I may to you!
O poets to come, I depend upon you!
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.
