LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,120)
  • Text Authors (19,527)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Afoot and light‑hearted, I take to the...
Language: English 
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune -- I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth -- that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women -- I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

Available sung texts:   ← What is this?

•   N. Rorem 

N. Rorem sets stanzas 1-2

About the headline (FAQ)

View text with all available footnotes

Text Authorship:

  • by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), no title, appears in Song of the Open Road, no. 1 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "The Open Road", 1997, published 1999, stanzas 1-2, from Evidence of Things Not Seen, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Wolfgang Wijdeveld (1910 - 1985), "Song of the open road", 1949, published 1949 [ medium voice, violin, viola, clarinet, and piano ], from Drie liederen, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this page: Ahmed E. Ismail

This text was added to the website: 2004-08-04
Line count: 14
Word count: 132

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris