Lyric Poem · Love

Unnamed Lands

by Walt Whitman

NATIONS ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before

These

States;

Garner’d clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel’d their

course, and pass’d on;

What vast-built cities—what orderly republics—what pastoral tribes and nomads;

What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others;

What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;

What sort of marriage—what costumes—what physiology and phrenology;

What of liberty and slavery among them—what they thought of death and the soul;

Who were witty and wise—who beautiful and poetic—who brutish and

undevelop’d;

Not a mark, not a record remains—And yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we are for nothing;

I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much as we now belong to

it,

and as all will henceforth belong to it.

Afar they stand—yet near to me they stand,

Some with oval countenances, learn’d and calm,

Some naked and savage—Some like huge collections of insects,

Some in tents—herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,

Some prowling through woods—Some living peaceably on farms, laboring, reaping,

filling

barns,

Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries, shows, courts,

theatres, wonderful monuments.

Are those billions of men really gone?

Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?

Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?

Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?

I believe of all those billions of men and women that fill’d the unnamed lands, every

one

exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or

she

grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn’d, in

life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them, any more than this

shall be the end of my nation, or of me;

Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games, wars, manners,

crimes,

prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen

world—counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world.

I suspect I shall meet them there,

I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.

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“Unnamed Lands” by Walt Whitman — quilloak.com/poems/unnamed-lands

Quick facts

Poem: Unnamed Lands
Poet: Walt Whitman
Length: 44 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Love, Death & Loss, Nature

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 44 lines · 6 stanzas of 4–13 lines
End rhyme: No regular perfect end rhyme. The poem may still be using slant rhyme, assonance, or internal echo, which this check does not score.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: Walt Whitman1819–1892
Source record: PoetryDBUnnamed Lands by walt-whitman, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 8eda9e8912a9a93c…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.