The Complete Poems Quotes

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard."

[Give me the splendid silent sun]”
― Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems

“The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you
who are here for him,
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,
The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,
Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the
going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.

List close my scholars dear,
Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,
Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are
tallied in you,
The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach
is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they
all be?
The most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays
would be vacuums.”
― Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems

“Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and Aeneas', Odysseus'
wanderings,
Placard "Removed" and "To Let" on the rocks of your snowy
Parnassus,
Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa's gate and on
Mount Moriah,
The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish
castles, and Italian collections,
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.

- Song of the Exposition”
― Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems

“The mark of true genius in the arts is an immediately recognizable style.”
― Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems