{
 "id": "walt-whitman/the-sleepers",
 "title": "The Sleepers",
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 232,
 "container": "The Sleepers",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1855,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1855), untitled",
  "note": "Fourth of the twelve untitled poems of the first edition. This text follows the 1891–92 “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/encyclopedia_entry659"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "the-sleepers.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": 184,
  "n_stanzas": 51,
  "n_parts": 8,
  "longest_line_chars": 164,
  "max_indent": 0
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  {
   "ordinal": "1",
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   "stanza_range": [
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "I wander all night in my vision,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The wretched features of ennuyés, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door’d rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The night pervades them and infolds them.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the murder’d person, how does he sleep?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The female that loves unrequited sleeps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The earth recedes from me into the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I become the other dreamers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am a dance⁠—play up there! the fit is whirling me fast!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the ever-laughing⁠—it is new moon and twilight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground nor sea.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet besides,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch’d arms, and resume the way;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stammerer, the well-formed person, the wasted or feeble person.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My truant lover has come, and it is dark.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Double yourself and receive me darkness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He rises with me silently from the bed.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman’s,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn my grandson’s stockings.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A shroud I see and I am the shroud, I wrap a body and lie in the coffin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain here, it is blank here, for reasons.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "(It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Steady and long he struggles,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his strength holds out,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis’d on rocks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I turn but do not extricate myself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear the burst as she strikes, I hear the howls of dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I search with the crowd, not one of the company is wash’d to us alive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrench’d hills amid a crowd of officers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch’d from his cheeks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The same at last and at last when peace is declared,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He stands in the room of the old tavern, the well-belov’d soldiers all pass through,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the cheek,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he shakes hands and bids goodbye to the army.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on the old homestead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop’d her face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the stranger,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and pliant limbs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The more she look’d upon her she loved her,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook’d food for her,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the afternoon she went away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O my mother was loth to have her go away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the week she thought of her, she watch’d for her many a month,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She remember’d her many a winter and many a summer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A show of the summer softness⁠—a contact of something unseen⁠—an amour of the light and air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am jealous and overwhelm’d with friendliness,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And will go gallivant with the light and air myself.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Autumn and winter are in the dreams, the farmer goes with his thrift,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The droves and crops increase, the barns are well-fill’d.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sailor sails, the exile returns home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fugitive returns unharm’d, the immigrant is back beyond months and years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with the well-known neighbors and faces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They warmly welcome him, he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well off,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill’d ships,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Swiss foots it toward his hills, the Prussian goes his way, the Hungarian his way, and the Pole his way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The homeward bound and the outward bound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyé, the onanist, the female that loves unrequited, the money-maker,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The actor and actress, those through with their parts and those waiting to commence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee that is chosen and the nominee that has fail’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The great already known and the great any time after to-day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form’d, the homely,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wrong’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I swear they are averaged now⁠—one is no better than the other,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The night and sleep have liken’d them and restored them.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I swear they are all beautiful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Everyone that sleeps is beautiful, everything in the dim light is beautiful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Peace is always beautiful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The myth of heaven indicates the soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It comes from its embower’d garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and clean the womb cohering,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The head well-grown proportion’d and plumb, and the bowels and joints proportion’d and plumb.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The soul is always beautiful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in its place,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go on in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their turns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite⁠—they unite now.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Learn’d and unlearn’d are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm’d by friend,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar, the wrong’d is made right,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master salutes the slave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is reliev’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress’d head is free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I too pass from the night,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you, but I know I came well and shall go well.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}