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Every Day Poems

A Poem A Day

  • Poetry of the 1500s
  • Poetry of the1600s
  • Poetry of the 1700s
  • Poems for Kids
  • War Poems
  • Every Poem

Whitman, Walt

Walt Whitman–One Hour to Madness and Joy

April 30, 2019 by Every Writer

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
a determin’d man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
untied and illumin’d!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

###

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819-March 26, 1892) is the father of modern poetry.

Filed Under: 1800s Poetry, Whitman, Walt

O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman

January 20, 2018 by Every Writer

Oh Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman

O Captain My Captain

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered 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 ribboned 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 anchored 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.

 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

 

Filed Under: 1800s Poetry, Classic Poems, poem, Whitman, Walt

The Past-Present by Walt Whitman

December 26, 2010 by Every Writer

The Past-Present

by Walt Whitman

I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for
these chants and now I have found it.
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept
nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in the present it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy in this America the Old World also;
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day;
It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts;
It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics,
creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the average man of to-day.

Filed Under: 1800s Poetry, Whitman, Walt

City of Ships by Walt Whitman

November 19, 2010 by Every Writer

City of Ships

?by Walt Whitman

?

City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful, sharp-bowed steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here;
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out,
??????? with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores! city of tall fa?ades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring up, O city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
Fear not! submit to no models but your own, O city!
Behold me! incarnate me, as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offered me?whom you adopted, I have adopted;
Good or bad, I never question you?I love all?I do not condemn anything;
I chant and celebrate all that is yours?yet peace no more;
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine;
War, red war, is my song through your streets, O city!

Filed Under: 1800s Poetry, Whitman, Walt

HUSH’D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY by Walt Whitman

September 9, 2010 by Every Writer

HUSH’D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
by Walt Whitman

(May 4, 1865)

Hush’d be the camps to-day,
And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
Our dear commander’s death.

No more for him life’s stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat?no more time’s dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing poet in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him?because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there,
Sing?as they close the doors of earth upon him?one verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

Filed Under: 1800s Poetry, Whitman, Walt

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