
The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)

From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly tome, From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surface, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted, None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes, These are the days that must happen to you: You shall not heap up what is call’d riches, You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve, You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an
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To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it, To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens, To take to your use out of
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Here is the test of wisdom, Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings, Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers, Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore, Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
Here is a man tallied – he realizes here what he has in him, The past, the future, majesty, love – if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.
Walt Whitman • The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.