Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.Continuities
About the poet
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Bro…
View profile & all 48 Poems / StoriesMore from Walt Whitman
To a Stranger
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Among the Multitude
Among the men and women the multitude,I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
We two, how long we were fool d,Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
Not the Pilot
Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled;Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,
