I am of old and young—a child as well as a man,
I am in fact very old as well as very new—
A child, very old, a traveler of thoughts and years,
Of youth long sped and middle age declining.
What is this flooding me, childhood or manhood?
There was never any more youth or age than there is now.

I have been musing over my life,
Years looking backward resuming, in answer to children,
Connecting events, dates, as links of a chain,
My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,
Myself through every bygone phase,
Through my idle youth and through middle age,
And old age at hand,
As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,
Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close.
In the larger view, in the scheme originally laid down for the “Leaves,” the last old age even if an old age of the dotard is as essential (if I live to old age) as the record of my first youth.

What a wonder it is—living still—coming here out of the stages of babyhood,
What more helpless creature is on this whole orb than the newborn baby?
Yet I am here, held on and on—from that stage, and stage, stage, stage since,
From ups and downs—with intervals—from elder years, mid-age, or youth,
And mine was no casual contact, but the contact of years, love, association,
Of childhood, boyhood, manhood, maturity,
Is it not a wonder—a wonder?

An old man bending I come among new faces,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases, grown, half-grown and babe,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth,
Journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood, balanced, florid and full,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood.

With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age, each has his care—
The young man’s ills are pride, desire, and heart-sickness,
And in his breast, the heat of passion’s fire;
Old age fears death.
Yet good in all,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age.

You lusty and graceful youth! You are great,
From eighteen to forty-five—halcyon days, sure enough,
If there’s anything in a man, physically or mentally, it’s sure to come out, to give an account of itself, along through that stretch of life.

But you are not exclusively great in youth,
Your middle age shall be great with amplitude and steadiness and full-blooded strength—
Between the years of forty and sixty a man who has properly regulated himself may be considered in the prime of life.
Your old age shall be equally great with majesty and bloom and fascination and love—the love of young and old.

O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
Not an achieved fact, but a becoming,
One generation playing its part and passing on,
Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,
The newborn emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates.
All, all alike endear’d,
Grown, ungrown, young or old,
The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women,
And the hunger that crosses the bridge between;
No gulf ever really divides one generation from another.

A man is a summons and challenge,
O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content,)
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them,
To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.

 NEXT: CHILDHOOD

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).