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,
By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he reaches his destination,
More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to compose march for these States,
For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need be, years, centuries hence.
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 / StoriesPassing 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,All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Among the men and women the multitude,I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,No birth, identity, form no object of the world.
We two, how long we were fool d,Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
