Inder of First Lines

A BATTER'D, wreck'd old man

Aboard at a ship's helm

A California song

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A carol closing sixty-nine-a résumé — a repetition
Add to your show, before you close it, France
Adieu O Soldier

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road

After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials
After a week of physical anguish

After surmounting threescore and ten
After the dazzle of day is gone

After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds

After the supper and talk-after the day is done

Ages and ages returning at intervals.

A glimpse through an interstice caught

A great year and place

Ah little recks the laborer

Ah, not this marble, dead and cold

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318

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33

Ah, poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats
Ah, whispering, something again, unseen
A leaf for hand in hand

A lesser proof than old Voltaire's, yet greater

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green
islands

All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, un-
approachable to analysis in the soul

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled
mirages
Always our old feuillage

i. 206

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road un-

A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself.
Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity.
Among the men and women the multitude.
An ancient song, reciting, ending

And now gentlemen.

And whence and why come you

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower
And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb
A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude .
A noiseless patient spider.

An old man bending I come among new faces
An old man's thought of school.

Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms
Approaching, nearing, curious

A promise to California

Are you the new person drawn toward me
Arm'd year-year of the struggle

As Adam early in the morning

As at thy portals also death.

.

As consequent from store of summer rains.
As down the stage again

Ashes of Soldiers, South or North

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As I ebb'd with the ocean of life.

As if a phantom caress'd me

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim
As I lay with my head in your lap camerado
As I ponder'd in silence.

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak flame
As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the
music is playing .

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old
As I walk these broad majestic days of peace
As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing
As one by one withdraw the lofty actors

A song, a poem of itself-the word itself a dirge
A song for occupations

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A song of the rolling earth, and of words according
As the Greek's signal flame, by antique records told
As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud

As they draw to a close

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods

A thousand perfect men and women appear
At the last, tenderly

A vague mist hanging 'round half the pages

iii. 19

A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power

i. 124

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking Aye, well I know 't is ghastly to descend that valley. iii. 36

BEAT! beat! drums!-blow! bugles! blow

Be composed-be at ease with me - I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature .

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44

161

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much
Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes.
Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day)
who lived through the fight

By blue Ontario's shore

By broad Potomac's shore, again old tongue.

By that long scan of waves, myself cali'd back, resumed

Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing,

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble

Come my tan-faced children

Come said the Muse

ii.

Come up from the fields father, here 's a letter from our

Pete.

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!

DAREST thou now O soul

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life

Did we count great, O Soul, to penetrate the themes of

mighty books

Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me

Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a

new-comer chatting

EARTH, my likeness

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man

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FACING West from California's shores .

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135

Far back, related on my mother's side.
Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty
Fast-anchor'd eternal O love! O woman I love
First O songs for a prelude

For him I sing

Flood tide below me! I see you face to face

For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi .
Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts.
For the lands and for these passionate days and for
myself

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for

From far Dakota's cañons .

Full of wickedness I-of many a smutch'd deed reminiscent

GIVE me the splendid silent sun with all his beams fulldazzling

Good-bye my Fancy-(I had a word to say

Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses

HAD I the choice to tally greatest bards

Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician
Hast never come to thee an hour

Have I no weapon-word for thee—some message brief and fierce

Have you learn'd lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you.

Heave the anchor short

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the con

crete .

Here, take this gift

Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest

lasting

Hold it up sternly

iii. II

see this it sends back (who is it?

How sweet the silent backward tracings.

How they are provided for upon the earth (appearing

at intervals.

Hush'd be the camps to-day

I AM he that aches with amorous love.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself

I doubt it not - then more, far more

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12

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show

I have not so much emulated the birds that musically

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear

I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this
puzzle the New World

I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last
Sunday morn I pass'd the church.