Quotes & Sayings About Death Walt Whitman

Great is life ... and real and mystical ... wherever and whoever, Great is death ... Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together; Sure as the stars return again after they merge on the light, death is as great as life. — Walt Whitman

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle."
-from "Song of Myself — Walt Whitman

I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. — Walt Whitman

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.
They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again. — Walt Whitman

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean
But I shall be good health to you nonetheless
And filter and fibre your blood. — Walt Whitman

A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly - see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon - and from such a beginning! — Walt Whitman

Gliding o'er all, through all,Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul - not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing. — Walt Whitman

In the evening, when everything is tired and quiet, I sit with Walt Whitman by the rose beds and listen to what that lonely and beautiful spirit has to tell me of night, sleep, death, and the stars. This dusky, silent hour is his; and this is the time when I can best hear the beatings of that most tender and generous heart. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death. — Walt Whitman

It is that something in the soul which says, - Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain. — Walt Whitman

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well. — Walt Whitman

Copulation is no more foul to me than death is. — Walt Whitman

I sleep - I sleep long.
I do not know it - it is without name - it is a word unsaid,

It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death - it is form, union, plan - it is eternal

life - it is Happiness.

from "Song of Myself," Strophe 50. — Walt Whitman

Like one that had a Star Wars Storm Trooper face on it and next to that "I had friends on that Death Star." And another one that said, "The gene pool could use a little chlorine." And another that said, "Contrary to belief, no one owes you anything." Then there were the random quotes, like Walt Whitman's "Resist much. Obey little. — Kristen Ashley

O soul, thou pleasest me - I thee;
Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear - lave me all over;
Bathe me, O God, in thee - mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.
O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath.



from "Passage to India — Walt Whitman

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death. — Walt Whitman

Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleased to my soul at death I cry), Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps! She swiftly courses from the shore, Joy, shipmate, joy! — Walt Whitman

Poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you — Walt Whitman

And I say to mankind, be not curious about god, For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God & about death.) I hear & behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, & each moment then, in the faces of men & women I see God, & in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, & every one is signed by God's name, & I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go, others will punctually come for ever & ever. — Walt Whitman

I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. — Walt Whitman

Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together. — Walt Whitman

The Last Invocation
At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks - from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks - with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love.) — Walt Whitman

And inevitably there always crept into our discussions the figure of Whitman, that one lone figure which America has produced in the course of her brief life. In Whitman the whole American scene comes to life, her past and her future, her birth and her death. Whatever there is of value in America Whitman has expressed, and there is nothing more to be said. — Henry Miller

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping. — Walt Whitman

O joy of suffering! To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God! — Walt Whitman

Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death. — Walt Whitman

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots, — Walt Whitman

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country - I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn." — Walt Whitman

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again and ever again, this soiled world. — Walt Whitman

Come, said my Soul
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas'd smiles I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning - as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name, — Walt Whitman

Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness. — Walt Whitman

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality ... it is idle to try to alarm me — Walt Whitman

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles. — Walt Whitman

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to
beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
as profound as any. — Walt Whitman