Walt Whitman

Here you will find the Poem These, I, Singing In Spring of poet Walt Whitman

These, I, Singing In Spring

THESE, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
 (For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and
 joy?
 And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
 Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world--but soon I pass the
 gates,
 Now along the pond-side--now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
 Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there,
 pick'd from the fields, have accumulated,
 (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and
 partly cover them--Beyond these I pass,)
 Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
 Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the
 silence,
 Alone I had thought--yet soon a troop gathers around me, 10
 Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or
 neck,
 They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive--thicker they come,
 a great crowd, and I in the middle,
 Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
 Plucking something for tokens--tossing toward whoever is near me;
 Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
 Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull'd off a live-oak in
 Florida, as it hung trailing down,
 Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
 And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
 (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me--and returns again,
 never to separate from me,
 And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades--this
 Calamus-root shall, 20
 Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)
 And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
 And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:
 These, I, compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits,
 Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from
 me,
 Indicating to each one what he shall have--giving something to each;
 But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
 I will give of it--but only to them that love, as I myself am capable
 of loving.