Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, healthy…

These are the opening lines of “Song of the Open Road”, the first of its fifteen sections. The walker sets out needing nothing: “The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.” He asks no more for good fortune, “I myself am good-fortune”; he whimpers no more, postpones no more, and is “Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms”. The earth is sufficient, and the poem goes on to invite the reader along: “Camerado, I give you my hand!”

Whitman first published the poem in 1856, in the second edition of Leaves of Grass, under the title “Poem of the Road”; the page shown here is from the edition of 1881–82. The first Leaves of Grass, printed at his own expense in 1855, had twelve poems; the book grew with him for the rest of his life.

The opening lines are among the most quoted in American poetry, a small hymn to freedom of movement. The word “afoot” matters: this is walking, not riding.

Song of the Open Road (Leaves of Grass), opening lines, 1856

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work