Mediums

They shall arise in the States,
They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and happiness,
They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos,
They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive,
They shall be complete women and men, their pose brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood clean and clear,
They shall fully enjoy materialism and the sight of products, they shall enjoy the sight of the beef, lumber, bread-stuffs, of Chicago the great city,
They shall train themselves to go in public to become orators and oratresses,
Strong and sweet shall their tongues be, poems and materials of poems shall come from their lives, they shall be makers and finders,
Of them and of their works shall emerge divine conveyers, to convey gospels,
Characters, events, retrospections, shall be convey’d in gospels, trees, animals, waters, shall be convey’d,
Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be convey’d.

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, from-noon-to-starry-night.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L11.

Cite this poem

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). “Mediums.” First published in Leaves of Grass (Boston, 1860–61). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/walt-whitman/mediums/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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