Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me, with confident step,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Strong and content I travel the open road,
I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods.

I start out, so evidently without design, for nowhere,
Take a walk just freely, when and as the spirit dictates.
Allured by a tree, a bush, a stream, a mountain, a sky,
I stay long and long, now here absorb’d and arrested,
Then wandering swiftly, I travel, travel on,
Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating.
Oh! the exhilaration of such freedom,
Being master of yourself and of the road!
No one who is not a walker can begin to know it.

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I lead no man to a dinner table,
I possess a home only in the sense that a ship possesses one—
I anchor my ship for a little while only, but a little while alighting,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Appearing and disappearing, then on my way go,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me—
How many travelers started from their homes and ne’er return’d!

I find my home wherever there are any homes of men,
What cities the light or warmth penetrates I penetrate those cities myself,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them.

I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like,
And whoever beholds me shall like me,
Whom I have staid with once I have found longing for me ever afterward.

I have distanced what is behind me for good reasons. There come epochs in our lives, when the breaking up, the tearing one’s-self away from old scenes, is of incalculable benefit; and one finds upon looking back, that the years which were spent in roving were the best, the most important of our life.

But I call anything back again when I desire it;
Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.

O highway I travel, do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you;
Cheerful voice of the public road, gay fresh sentiment of the road,
You shall be more to me than my poem,
You express me better than I can express myself,
My judgments, thoughts, I henceforth try by the open air, the road.

Oh! a great road is not the stone merely that goes to make it—but something more—far more! A great road is a great moral agent. Here is realization, here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my spirit said, No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Onward! Onward!
Every step contested—the struggle ever renew’d.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;
The brightest jewel, saith the Persian poet, that glitters on the neck of the young man is the spirit of adventure,
Boldness—to encourage me or anyone continually to strike out alone,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
Thou, soul, unloosen’d—the restlessness after I know not what.

I do not doubt there are realizations I have no idea of,
Waiting for me through time, and through the universes—also upon this earth,
I do not doubt that there are experiences and growths for me through time, and through the universes,
Of which I cannot have the slightest inkling.

What is life but an experiment?
Always changing, advancing, retreating, enlarging, condensing, widening,
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing, and filling,
Every day something more—something unsuspected.
The vicissitudes are many, the certainties few,
The best plan is to have no plan,
To keep fluid, to let the influences possess you for what they may,
To go this path or that as the mood dictates—the free way.

NEXT: YOU AND THE POET ON THE OPEN ROAD

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).