Whitman List Poem, Theme 1: Nature

THEME 1: NATURE
The following excerpt from “There was a Child went Forth” will be followed by a “List Poem” by Classes 5-303 and 5-302, entered one line at a time as “Comments” to this blog post.

Click the title of this post (Whitman List Poem, Theme 1: Nature) and scroll down to read through our list of poetry lines.

Excerpt from Walt Whitman’s There was a Child went Forth with a nature theme.

THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;