Look around you on the beautiful earth, the free air, sky, fields,
And streets—the people swarming in all directions.
All this is common you say—
Now all these things seem to me the most beautiful objects in the world.

Above all, the heavenly aerial beauty, 
The sky so calm continues beautiful,
What is more beautiful than the night, the full moon, and the stars?
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful,
The earth in perfect power and beauty—
O vast rondure, swimming in space,
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty.

I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth,
Not the vaunted scenery of the tourist, picturesque,
But the plain landscape, the bleak sea shore, or the barren plain,
And all the growths of the earth,
And the beautiful curious liquid.

The earth recedes from me into the night, I see that it is beautiful,
And I see that what is not the earth is beautiful;
Everything in the dim light is beautiful.

Art most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy and sane only with nature. An art that is nature—that will grow, grow, grow upon you, develop as you develop—is finally all opened to you as a flower!

Men and women perceive the beauty well enough, but we are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves—that last and highest beauty consisting of the full exploitation and fruitage of a human identity—the beauty of all adventurous and daring persons; the beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves; the beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces; the passionate tenacity of early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, hunters, seafaring persons, drivers of horses; the passion for light and the open air—all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty.

Beautiful are the faces around me, I swear they are all beautiful,
I announce myriads of beautiful youths, the young are beautiful,
But the old faces are more beautiful than the young—
Not the beautiful youth, but the bronzed old farmer and father,
Not the beautiful girl or elegant lady, but the mechanic’s wife at work,
Or the inimitable beauty of the mother of many children, middle-aged or old.

Behold a woman!
The sun just shines on her old white head,
Her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky—
So many fine-looking gray hair’d women—healthy and wifely and motherly,
And wonderfully charming and beautiful.

Every one that sleeps is beautiful,
The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
The body is beautiful—this wondrous and beautiful structure,
In man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face—
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees—
Sex is also beautiful.
The soul is always beautiful,
The invisible spirit of so much beauty and so much innocence.

Of ugliness­—
There is just as much in it as there is in beauty,
Beauty grieves and pines as much as the brain which wears a homely face. Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest is beautiful to her.

The ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me;
Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome,
The most beautiful and attractive men and women I have ever known have been technically homely.

There is no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,
You are beautiful to me—you make me think of death;
Death is beautiful—
What indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?

NEXT: MUSIC

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).