Great Throughts Treasury

"Keep this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, you shall possess the good of the Earth and the Sun, (millions of suns is still remaining). Remaineth You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor you shall see through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the schemes you in books, you shall not look through my eyes, nor take things from my hand, you shall listen to all sides and work things out by yourself."

"Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you."

"Keep your splendid silent sun, keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods, keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards, keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum; give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs!"

"Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn."

"Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground."

"Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed."

"Let us twain walk aside from the rest; now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony, come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none—Tell me the whole story, tell me what you would not tell your brother, wife, husband, or physician."

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

"Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; the varied and ample land,--the South and the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, and ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn."

"Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat; not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best; only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice."

"Long and long has the grass been growing, long and long has the rain been falling, long has the globe been rolling round."

"Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams, now I wash the gum from your eyes, you must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life."

"Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, now I will you to be a bold swimmer,to jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair."

"Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem."

"Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees."

"Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, the endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded,) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me."

"Many a good man I have seen go under"

"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."

"Maybe it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who knows?), maybe it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally, good-bye—and hail! my Fancy."

"Me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature."

"Mind not the old man beseeching the young man; let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties; make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses, so strong you thump, O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow."

"My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face,"

"My lovers suffocate me! Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls... coming naked to me at night, Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river... swinging and chirping over my head, Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush, Or while I swim in the bath....or drink from the pump on the corner... or the curtain is down at the opera... or I glimpse at a woman’s face in the railroad car; Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine."

"My own songs awakened from that hour, and with them the key, the word up from the waves, the word of the sweetest song and all songs, that strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, (Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside) the sea whispered me."

"My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them"

"My ties and ballasts leave me - I travel - I sail - My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents - I am afoot with my vision."

"My words itch at your ears till you understand them."

"Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me.... Nature was naked, and I was also.... Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! - ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness the indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is - nor what faith or art or health really is."

"No dainty sweet affectionate I."

"Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. 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 land."

"Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, the hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo."

"Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you."

"Nothing external to me can have any power over me."

"Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, it turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, it renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, it gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last."

"Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

"Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together."

"Now understand me well. Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary."

"Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find."

"Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown, the flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas, the countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd, the down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets, immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week, the carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the brown-faced sailors."

"O amazement of things—even the least particle!"

"O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, the ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, while follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; but O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills, for you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths - for you the shores a-crowding, for you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, you've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, my father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, the ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, from fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, walk the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead."

"O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee."

"O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?"

"O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for."

"O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!"

"O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I become part of that, whatever it is."

"O loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass."

"O magnet-south! O glistening, perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!"

"O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; the question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse."

"O Mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the awful loads and trains and boatloads of poor, bloody, and pale and wounded young men again — for that is what we certainly will, and before very long. I see all the little signs, getting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I have myself seen: the arrival of the wounded after a battle, and the scenes on the field, too, and I can hardly believe my own recollections. What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men but a lot of devils and butchers butchering each other."