There Was a Child Went Forth | A Poem by Walt Whitman
April 30 - I remember the feeling after class on January 29, 1993. I was free for the first time in my human life to be me. And all because of the poem, "There Was a Child Went Forth" by Walt Whitman. This poem is very literally a threshold I stepped through as the crabby old professor read it in a Life and Letters U.S. History Class and I came out of class that afternoon no longer afraid to be myself. I am ever grateful and am reminded of it daily when I see the tattoo of white clover on my left arm. There's additional meaning with the clover as the image I chose to represent this poem on my body, but that story's for another time.
Read “There Was a Child Went Forth” on the Whitman Archives website.
Find this poem, and many more inspiring poems, in Whitman’s collection of poems, “Leaves of Grass.”
If you like Walt Whitman’s poems, you’ll love “Specimen Days and Collect” which is a collection of essays, journal entries, and other ephemeral writings.