A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman

Even in this short poem you get a sense of Whitman's sweeping and powerful voice. If you haven't read Whitman before and you're intruiged, you should pick up Leaves of Grass.



A Clear Midnight
By Walt Whitman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,Night, sleep, death and the stars.



Walt Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 30s. While a student of the classics, his style was perhaps most influenced by cadences in the Bible. His work was unique for its time and "free," contrasting starkly with the rhyme and metrical regularity of most poetry of the period.