Thought

Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like;
(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls,
So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,
And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,
And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots,
And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities,
And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more,
And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)

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–#L8.

Cite this poem

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

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