{ "id": "walt-whitman/song-of-the-open-road", "title": "Song of the Open Road", "poet": "Walt Whitman", "poet_slug": "walt-whitman", "language": "en", "book": "Leaves of Grass", "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass", "book_kind": "volume", "sequence": 83, "container": null, "epigraph": null, "first_published": { "year": 1856, "venue": "Leaves of Grass (1856), as “Poem of the Road”", "note": "This text follows the 1891–92 “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass.", "uncertain": false, "sources": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_Open_Road_(poem)" ] }, "source": { "kind": "standard-ebooks", "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass", "file": "song-of-the-open-road.xhtml", "upstream": [ "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322", "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog" ], "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)" }, "verification": { "level": "structural-only", "last_checked": "2026-08-12" }, "stats": { "n_lines": 224, "n_stanzas": 50, "n_parts": 15, "longest_line_chars": 208, "max_indent": 0 }, "site_ready": true, "parts": [ { "ordinal": "1", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 0, 4 ] }, { "ordinal": "2", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 4, 6 ] }, { "ordinal": "3", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 6, 8 ] }, { "ordinal": "4", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 8, 12 ] }, { "ordinal": "5", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 12, 16 ] }, { "ordinal": "6", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 16, 24 ] }, { "ordinal": "7", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 24, 25 ] }, { "ordinal": "8", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 25, 27 ] }, { "ordinal": "9", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 27, 30 ] }, { "ordinal": "10", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 30, 35 ] }, { "ordinal": "11", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 35, 36 ] }, { "ordinal": "12", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 36, 37 ] }, { "ordinal": "13", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 37, 45 ] }, { "ordinal": "14", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 45, 48 ] }, { "ordinal": "15", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 48, 50 ] } ], "stanzas": [ [ { "text": "Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Healthy, free, the world before me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Strong and content I travel the open road.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The earth, that is sufficient,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I do not want the constellations any nearer,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I know they are very well where they are,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I know they suffice for those who belong to them.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I believe that much unseen is also here.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "You air that serves me with breath to speak!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You doors and ascending steps! you arches!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The earth expanding right hand and left hand,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The picture alive, every part in its best light,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Do you say Venture not⁠—if you leave me you are lost?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You express me better than I can express myself,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You shall be more to me than my poem.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I think whoever I see must be happy.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Listening to others, considering well what they say,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I inhale great draughts of space,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I am larger, better than I thought,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I did not know I held so much goodness.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "All seems beautiful to me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I will recruit for myself and you as I go,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here a great personal deed has room,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here is the test of wisdom,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here is realization,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here is a man tallied⁠—he realizes here what he has in him,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The past, the future, majesty, love⁠—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Only the kernel of every object nourishes;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here is the efflux of the soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass;)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Here rises the fluid and attaching character,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Traveling with me you find what never tires.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The earth never tires,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! we must not stop here,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! the inducements shall be greater,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "We will sail pathless and wild seas,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Allons! from all formules!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The stale cadaver blocks up the passage⁠—the burial waits no longer.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! yet take warning!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "We convince by our presence.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Listen! I will be honest with you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These are the days that must happen to you:", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They too are on the road⁠—they are the swift and majestic men⁠—they are the greatest women,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "All parts away for the progress of souls,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "All religion, all solid things, arts, governments⁠—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Forever alive, forever forward,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But I know that they go toward the best⁠—toward something great.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Behold through you as bad as the rest,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Speaking of anything else but never of itself.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! through struggles and wars!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Have the past struggles succeeded?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now understand me well⁠—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He going with me must go well arm’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Allons! the road is before us!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "It is safe⁠—I have tried it⁠—my own feet have tried it well⁠—be not detain’d!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Camerado, I give you my hand!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I give you my love more precious than money,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I give you myself before preaching or law;", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?", "indent": 0 } ] ] }