Whitman, as Printed

‹ Leaves of Grass, 1891–92

The lines with “life”

life 256 Back to L

  1. p. 9, line 6Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
  2. p. 10, line 2For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,
  3. p. 11, line 5Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself,
  4. p. 11, line 8Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself,)
  5. p. 12, line 25Of every human life,
  6. p. 13, line 23Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
  7. p. 14, line 19And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
  8. p. 14, line 20And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
  9. p. 14, line 21(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
  10. p. 14, line 22Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
  11. p. 16, line 12Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,
  12. p. 16, line 16Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;
  13. p. 18, line 12THOU reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
  14. p. 19, line 10This then is life,
  15. p. 22, line 18(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,
  16. p. 22, line 26For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth,
  17. p. 25, line 16Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and life return in the body and the soul,
  18. p. 26, line 27Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor,
  19. p. 27, line 10For your life adhere to me,
  20. p. 31, line 2Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
  21. p. 31, line 22People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
  22. p. 34, line 6And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
  23. p. 34, line 7And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
  24. p. 37, line 3Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
  25. p. 38, line 8In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,
  26. p. 38, line 12It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
  27. p. 46, line 22Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
  28. p. 48, line 2And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,
  29. p. 49, line 11You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
  30. p. 68, line 17Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
  31. p. 69, line 17And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
  32. p. 72, line 19Lighting on every moment of my life,
  33. p. 74, line 16You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
  34. p. 77, line 9And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
  35. p. 78, line 3It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.
  36. p. 79, line 9The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
  37. p. 80, line 23The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,
  38. p. 89, line 20I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.
  39. p. 90, line 5Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,
  40. p. 92, line 10To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
  41. p. 94, line 3Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,
  42. p. 95, line 19Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
  43. p. 96, line 2Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest,
  44. p. 96, line 4Projecting them along that substantial life,
  45. p. 96, line 21O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers, I think it must be for death,
  46. p. 96, line 23Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,
  47. p. 97, line 11Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life,
  48. p. 97, line 13That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that they are mainly for you,
  49. p. 97, line 29The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon'd,
  50. p. 100, line 29Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
  51. p. 106, line 7Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
  52. p. 106, line 11I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
  53. p. 107, line 21How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,
  54. p. 111, line 6O sharer of my roving life.
  55. p. 111, line 22FULL of life now, compact, visible,
  56. p. 113, line 18I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God the Christ,
  57. p. 116, line 3I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd Bacchus,
  58. p. 129, line 21The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
  59. p. 132, line 16Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
  60. p. 133, line 16Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
  61. p. 137, line 22They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else,
  62. p. 140, line 11California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume, the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the graves one in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;
  63. p. 143, line 13The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the patiently yielded life.
  64. p. 143, line 21To continue and be employ'd there all my life,
  65. p. 144, line 21Something far away from a puny and pious life!
  66. p. 145, line 22Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
  67. p. 145, line 27My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
  68. p. 146, line 11The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
  69. p. 147, line 18O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
  70. p. 147, line 19To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
  71. p. 148, line 11O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
  72. p. 150, line 2The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work,
  73. p. 151, line 28What invigorates life invigorates death,
  74. p. 160, line 18A keep for life for practical invention.
  75. p. 160, line 30Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect human life be started,
  76. p. 161, line 13In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated—in another animals, animal life and development.
  77. p. 162, line 1Practical, peaceful life, the people's life, the People themselves,
  78. p. 162, line 20To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled,
  79. p. 163, line 5And helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its soul,
  80. p. 163, line 6For the eternal real life to come.
  81. p. 165, line 5Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long,
  82. p. 166, line 19You untold life of me,
  83. p. 166, line 21Perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a summer sun,
  84. p. 166, line 26Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,
  85. p. 167, line 20You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and love and aught that comes from life and love,
  86. p. 167, line 21You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, (age upon age working in death the same as life,)
  87. p. 172, line 18It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,
  88. p. 174, line 19The hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard, store, or factory,
  89. p. 175, line 1These shows all near you by day and night—workman! whoever you are, your daily life!
  90. p. 175, line 15You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong life,
  91. p. 181, line 8By every life a share or more or less,
  92. p. 187, line 6You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,
  93. p. 188, line 5Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
  94. p. 189, line 24(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?
  95. p. 189, line 25Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all your life?
  96. p. 190, line 15O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
  97. p. 200, line 9O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
  98. p. 200, line 33A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
  99. p. 202, line 1AS I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
  100. p. 203, line 20Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
  101. p. 213, line 20O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)
  102. p. 214, line 9Of vista—suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain'd on the journey,
  103. p. 215, line 1O ME! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
  104. p. 215, line 7The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
  105. p. 215, line 8That you are here—that life exists and identity,
  106. p. 215, line 16I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,
  107. p. 218, line 4The voyage of the soul—not life alone,
  108. p. 221, line 4It's O for a manly life in the camp.
  109. p. 223, line 22Man's desire and babe's desire, I'll twine them in, I'll put in life,
  110. p. 226, line 14The forty millions of people,—O bard! in life and death supreme,
  111. p. 230, line 22As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive against me, and why seek my life?
  112. p. 236, line 15Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;
  113. p. 237, line 28O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,
  114. p. 240, line 24Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
  115. p. 243, line 6Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard,
  116. p. 244, line 17Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life,
  117. p. 245, line 18O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
  118. p. 245, line 19The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
  119. p. 252, line 1DELICATE cluster! flag of teeming life!
  120. p. 253, line 21The rapid march, the life of the camp,
  121. p. 256, line 10Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
  122. p. 258, line 18And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
  123. p. 260, line 19For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
  124. p. 260, line 33And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
  125. p. 264, line 26There can be any number of supremes—one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another.
  126. p. 266, line 5That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
  127. p. 268, line 1Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the Northeast, Northwest, Southwest,
  128. p. 268, line 2Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,
  129. p. 268, line 4On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more.
  130. p. 270, line 22Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,
  131. p. 271, line 11Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself?
  132. p. 272, line 21Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,
  133. p. 273, line 15To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
  134. p. 273, line 19Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)
  135. p. 277, line 30Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life,
  136. p. 278, line 1(For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give,)
  137. p. 278, line 30A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast demesne,
  138. p. 281, line 28Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the revolving hay-rakes,
  139. p. 285, line 13House of life, erewhile talking and laughing—but ah, poor house, dead even then,
  140. p. 287, line 19And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)
  141. p. 288, line 4And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
  142. p. 289, line 13In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life.
  143. p. 290, line 19All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake, or opinion's sake,
  144. p. 291, line 17Declines to separate one part of life from every part,
  145. p. 291, line 21Knows that the young man who composedly peril'd his life and lost it has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,
  146. p. 291, line 22That he who never peril'd his life, but retains it to old age in riches and ease, has probably achiev'd nothing for himself worth mentioning,
  147. p. 294, line 24The life thou lived'st we know not,
  148. p. 295, line 22All, all the shows of laboring life,
  149. p. 296, line 5By you and all your teeming life old Thames,
  150. p. 300, line 10It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—the average man of to-day,
  151. p. 300, line 18And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots,
  152. p. 300, line 19And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities,
  153. p. 307, line 26Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,
  154. p. 310, line 4Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death;
  155. p. 313, line 3Song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench'd in despair,
  156. p. 315, line 6Cheerfully tallying life, walking the world, the real,
  157. p. 315, line 16Poems bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely wafted in night air, uncaught, unwritten,
  158. p. 318, line 17With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?
  159. p. 323, line 25Thou knowest my years entire, my life,
  160. p. 323, line 26My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely;
  161. p. 324, line 22That Thou O God my life hast lighted,
  162. p. 325, line 2What do I know of life? what of myself?
  163. p. 334, line 8A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,
  164. p. 334, line 20Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty,
  165. p. 335, line 18The earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his life are well-consider'd.
  166. p. 337, line 4And I have dream'd that the purpose and essence of the known life, the transient,
  167. p. 337, line 5Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent.
  168. p. 337, line 24And all preparation is for it—and identity is for it—and life and materials are altogether for it!
  169. p. 339, line 9Relentless I forgive no man—whoever sins dies—I will have that man's life;
  170. p. 340, line 11Santa Spirita, breather, life,
  171. p. 340, line 15Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including Saviour and Satan,
  172. p. 340, line 17Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive, (namely the unseen,)
  173. p. 340, line 18Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, the general soul,
  174. p. 340, line 25The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)
  175. p. 342, line 9(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)
  176. p. 342, line 12I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all.
  177. p. 342, line 17Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?
  178. p. 345, line 10I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
  179. p. 345, line 12O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
  180. p. 346, line 13I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
  181. p. 346, line 14(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
  182. p. 347, line 7As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,
  183. p. 349, line 4Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life,
  184. p. 349, line 20Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit,
  185. p. 356, line 12Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life
  186. p. 358, line 25Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
  187. p. 362, line 13And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
  188. p. 364, line 3(For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?)
  189. p. 365, line 9WEAVE in, weave in, my hardy life,
  190. p. 365, line 13(We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor really aught we know,
  191. p. 366, line 27The loftiest of life upheld by death,
  192. p. 367, line 5Electric life forever at the centre,)
  193. p. 372, line 2My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
  194. p. 374, line 8Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and sweet blood,
  195. p. 374, line 17You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.
  196. p. 374, line 20Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
  197. p. 376, line 20To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best,
  198. p. 376, line 27But I, my life surveying, closing,
  199. p. 379, line 9To the sense of Death, and accepting exulting in Death in its turn the same as life,
  200. p. 379, line 17Our life is closed, our life begins,
  201. p. 379, line 22THE untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
  202. p. 379, line 25And what are those of life but for Death?
  203. p. 380, line 2Now land and life finalè and farewell,
  204. p. 380, line 20I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and the songs of life and death,
  205. p. 381, line 8I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
  206. p. 384, line 44[…] Old Salt Kossabone, 395 The Dead Tenor, 395 Continuities, 396 Yonnondio, 396 Life, 396 "Going Somewhere," 397 Small the Theme of My Chant, 397 True Conquerors […]
  207. p. 384, line 52[…] Calming Thought of All, 398 Thanks in Old Age, 398 Life and Death, 398 The Voice of the Rain, 399 Soon Shall the […]
  208. p. 386, line 3Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
  209. p. 387, line 2Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
  210. p. 388, line 20But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
  211. p. 391, line 4My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past,
  212. p. 391, line 23—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:
  213. p. 394, line 19Thou, like the parti-colored world itself—like infinite, teeming, mocking life!
  214. p. 395, line 3(Had been a sailor all his life—was nearly 90—lived with his married grandchild, Jenny;
  215. p. 396, line 3Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
  216. p. 397, line 6"Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,)
  217. p. 398, line 11For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,
  218. p. 399, line 8And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin, and make pure and beautify it;
  219. p. 400, line 17Away with your life of peace!—your joys of peace!
  220. p. 403, line 17Of life or death, or soldier's wound, of country's loss or safety,
  221. p. 409, line 33[…] facts, theories and faith of the whole preceding life […]
  222. p. 410, line 2My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,
  223. p. 410, line 10(My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer's, autumn's spread,
  224. p. 410, line 17My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of '63 and '4,
  225. p. 412, line 19In every object, mountain, tree, and star—in every birth and life,
  226. p. 417, line 14Dash'd pell-mell by the blow—yet usher'd life continuing on,
  227. p. 418, line 17Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep!
  228. p. 419, line 2Allah is all, all, all—is immanent in every life and object,
  229. p. 419, line 6Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
  230. p. 420, line 26I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:
  231. p. 426, line 37[…] desire that had been flitting through my previous life, or hovering on the flanks, mostly indefinite hitherto, had steadily […]
  232. p. 428, line 5[…] reality would seem incomplete, and science, democracy, and life itself, finally in vain […]
  233. p. 430, line 23[…] and that such conception of current or gone-by life and art is for us the only means of their […]
  234. p. 431, line 29[…] past, of being the loftiest of the singers life has yet given voice to. All, however, relate to and […]
  235. p. 436, line 6[…] the sunny forenoon and early midday of my life.) I will want them to be the poems of women […]
  236. p. 436, line 18[…] principle of those lines so gives breath of life to my whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces […]
  237. p. 437, line 16[…] and definite as the visible, eventuate all concrete life and all materialism, through Time. My book ought to emanate […]
  238. p. 437, line 19[…] elements, and has been the comfort of my life since it was originally commenced […]
  239. p. 438, line 7[…] personal affair—a piece out of a man's life […]