Quotes
Quotes - Whitman
Star of resplendent front! Thy glorious eye
Shines on me still from out yon clouded sky.
Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;
The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart
But colder those wild words of doom,--"Ye must part."
The sweet imperious mouth, whose haughty valor
Defied all portents of impending doom.
Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
Till the slant sunbeams through the fringes raining
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.
Enchantress of the stormy seas,
Priestess of Night's high mysteries.
The summer skies are darkly blue,
The days are still and bright,
And Evening trails her robes of gold
Through the dim halls of Night.
Raven from the dim dominions
On the Night's Plutonian shore,
Oft I hear thy dusky pinions
Wave and flutter round my door--
See the shadow of thy pinions
Float along the moonlit floor.
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.
None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how certain the future is.
I say the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion.
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
I loafe and invite my soul.
I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.
In the faces of men and women I see God.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country--I now go back there,
I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn."
Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth.
The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman.
In this broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.
All, all for immortality,
Love like the light silently wrapping all.
Youth, large, lusty, loving--Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.
Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!
O Banner!
Not houses of peace are you, nor any nor all of their prosperity; if need be you shall have every one of those houses to destroy them;
You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money;
May they stand fast then? Not an hour, unless you, above them and all, stand fast.
