The universe is in myself,
I am all, I have all lives, all effects, all hidden invisibly in myself,
The scope of the world, and of time and space, are upon me—
Walt Whitman, a cosmos,
Who is the amplitude of the earth,
Who includes diversity and is nature,
Whose scope of mind includes all, the whole known universe—
This poet celebrates himself, and that is the way he celebrates all.

Somehow I seem to get identity with each and every thing around me, in its condition,
Locations and times—
What is it in me that meets them all, whenever and wherever?
Forms, colors, densities, odors—
What is it in me that corresponds with them?
There is that in me,
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
I do not know what it is,
(The all-basis, the nerve, the great-sympathetic—the plenum within humanity, humanity’s foundations and hold-together, giving stamp to everything—is necessarily invisible,)
But I know it is in me.

O lands!  all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I become a part of that, (whatever it is,)
Elasticity I am, and I am the dense rock, and I this invisible gas of the air,
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing, absorbing all to myself.

What is marvellous? What is unlikely? What is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened a pair of eyelids, only the space of peachpits, and given audience to far and near and to the sunset—to the unnamable variety and overwhelming splendor of the whole world—and had all things enter with electric swiftness, without confusion or jostling, keeping each to its distinct isolation.

In a little house keep I pictures suspended,
My picture gallery is not a fix’d house,
It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other,
Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories,
Hundreds and thousands—all the varieties,
For wherever I have been has afforded me superb pictures,
And whatever I have heard has given me perfect pictures,
Every rod of land or sea affords me, as long as I live, inimitable pictures,
Such transformations, such pictures and poems.
What shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls?
Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death.

Walt Whitman, emulous of nativities, climates,
The seashore, the forest, the prairie, or the surging manifold streets of the cities,
Labors, products, war, good and evil—
These me, how they and all grow into me,
The absorption into me from the landscape, stars, thunder, rain, and snow.

In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low.
I take you to be mine, you beautiful, terrible, rude forms,
I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes,
Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself.

Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them.

Space and time! my soul! 
Now I see it is true, what I guess’d at,
What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass,
What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning—
My right hand is time, and my left hand is space—both are ample,
I know I have the best of time and space,
And was never measured and never will be measured,
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
I do not doubt I am limitless,
And am not contain’d between my hat and boots.

What widens within you Walt Whitman?
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes,
Within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon and sinks again,
Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months,
I skirt sierras, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, my palms cover continents,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself,
Receiving identity through materials, observing characters and absorbing them,
Rejoicing in all, portrayer of all, with their full-beating pulses of life—
And they proceed from me, myself a part of them,
We have met and fused, even if only once,
But enough that we have really absorb’d each other and understand each other,
(Account for it or not—credit or not—it is all true.)

I, turning, call to thee O soul,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of space,
The copiousness, the removedness, vitality, loose-clear-crowdedness of that stellar concave spreading overhead, softly absorb’d into me,
Rising so free, interminably high, stretching east, west, north, south,
And I, though but a point in the centre below, embodying all.

Outside the asteroids I reconnoitre at my ease,
I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,
And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green,
And I carry straight threads thence to the sun and to distant unseen suns—
Through me many long dumb voices of the threads that connect the stars.

Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.

NEXT: THE POET IS ALL HUMANITY

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).