I Was Looking a Long While

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) · Leaves of Grass · Autumn Rivulets · 1860

I was looking a long while for Intentions,
For a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants⁠—and now I have found it,
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject,)
It is no more in the legends than in all else,
It is in the present⁠—it is this earth to-day,
It is in Democracy⁠—(the purport and aim of all the past,)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day⁠—the average man of to-day,
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the modern⁠—all for the average man of to-day.

Where this text comes from

First published in Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61). Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1860–61 scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass, autumn-rivulets.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L10.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “I Was Looking a Long While.” First published in Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/i-was-looking-a-long-while/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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