Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was born on Long Island, New York. Early in his life, he worked as a country schoolteacher and printer and served as writer and editor for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. He continued in a variety of jobs, writing and working as a carpenter, and published his now famous Leaves of Grass in 1855. Whitman would continue to revise and add to Leaves of Grass until his death. Regarded as offensive and vulgar at the time for its outspoken sexual content, the poems celebrated individuality and the richness of life. In 1862, Whitman went to Virginia to find his brother George, who had been wounded in the Civil War. He was shocked to witness the horrors of war firsthand and was deeply moved by the suffering of the wounded. He worked as an aide in army hospitals in Washington, caring first for his brother and then for other soldiers as well. Among Whitman’s most well-known poems from this time are “O Captain! My Captain!” (p. 659) and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” both about Abraham Lincoln.

There Was a Child Went Forth

This poem was published without a title in the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855). Later it became known as “Poem of the Child That Went Forth, and Always Goes Forth, Forever and Forever,” and finally as “There Was a Child Went Forth.”

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, 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,

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And grass, and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird,

And the March-born lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf, and the noisy brood of the barnyard 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.

And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him… . wintergrain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,

And the appletrees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward… . and wood-berries . . and the commonest weeds by the road;

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,

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And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school . . and the friendly boys that passed . . and the quarrelsome boys . . and the tidy and freshcheeked girls . . and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents . . he that had propelled the fatherstuff at night, and fathered him..and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him… . they gave this child more of themselves than that,

They gave him afterward every day… . they and of them became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the suppertable,

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The mother with mild words… . clean her cap and gown… . a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by:

The father, strong, selfsufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust,

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture… . the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsayed… . The sense of what is real… . the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

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The doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime…the curious whether and how,

Whether that which appears so is so… . Or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets . . if they are not flashes and specks what are they?

The streets themselves, and the facades of houses… . the goods in the windows,

Vehicles . . teams . . the tiered wharves, and the huge crossing at the ferries;

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The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset… . the river between,

Shadows . . aureola and mist . . light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off,

The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide . . the little boat slacktowed astern,

The hurrying tumbling waves and quickbroken crests and slapping;

The strata of colored clouds… . the long bar of maroontint away solitary by itself… . the spread of purity it lies motionless in,

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The horizon’s edge, the flying seacrow, the fragrance of saltmarsh and shoremud;

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and will always go forth every day,

And these become of him or her that peruses them now.

(1855)