A Promise to California
A promise to California,
Or inland to the great pastoral Plains,
and on to Puget sound and Oregon;
Sojourning east a while longer,
soon I travel toward you, to remain,
to teach robust American love,
For I know very well that I
and robust love belong among you,
inland, and along the Western sea;
For these States tend inland and toward
the Western sea, and I will also.
Walt Whitman
To Foreign Lands
I Heard that you ask'd for something
to prove this puzzle, the New World,
And to define America,
her athletic Democracy;
Therefore I send you my poems,
that you behold in them what you wanted.
Walt Whitman
Facing West from California's Shores
Facing west from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves,
towards the house of maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea,
the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan,
from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia, from the north, from the God,
the sage, and the hero,
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas
and the spice islands,
Long having wandered since,
round the earth having wandered,
Now I face home again,
very pleased and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
Walt Whitman
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,
Without any companion it stood there
uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty,
made me think of myself,
But I wondered how it could utter
joyous leaves standing alone there without
its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig
with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away,
and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me
as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think
of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token,
it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live oak
glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life
without a friend or lover near,
I know very well I could not.
Walt Whitman
Other Poems by Walt Whitman
Trickle Drops, City of Orgies,
To a Stranger, That Shadow my Likeness,
Full of Life Now, Shut Not Your Doors
Walt Whitman Quotes:
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me
more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman
I say that democracy can never prove itself
beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly
grows its own forms of art, poems, schools,
theology, displacing all that exists, or that
has been produced anywhere in the past,
under opposite influences.
Walt Whitman
And your very flesh
shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
Poems by Famous Classical Poets
Love In The City
Don't Cry For Me Argentina
Wedding Customs Traditions and Superstions
Love Romance and Kisses
Romantic Love Quotes
Love and Romance Greeting Cards
The most important thing a father can do
for his children is to love their mother.
- Theodore M. Hesburgh
