Walt Whitman

“I exist as I am, that is enough”

“Resist much, obey little”

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars”

“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you”

“The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

“Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?”

“The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns, With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.”

“Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?”

“I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades.”

“O tan-faced prairie-boy, Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look’d on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.”

“This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful, It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or Japan, talking other dialects, And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become attached to them as I do to men in my own lands, O I know we should be brethren and lovers, I know I should be happy with them.”

“Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not.”

“The moon gives you light, And the bugles and the drums give you music, And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans, My heart gives you love.”

“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.”

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

“Darest thou now O soul, Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?”

“There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

“One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.”

“My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.”

“The clock indicates the moment--but what does eternity indicate?”

“We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.”

“The past and present wilt--I have fill’d them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.”

“Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing? If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.”

“Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement, Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.”

“Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form--no object of the world. Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.”

“O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.”

“I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it.”

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.”

“So they show their relations to me and I accept them, They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.”

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

“A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”

“There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, 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.”

“Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.”

“All space, all time, (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with eidolons only.”

“My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.”

“I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven, O suns--O grass of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions, If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?”

“I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night, I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.”

“O to realize space! The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds, To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with them.”

“Day full-blown and splendid-day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.”

“Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.”

“Lo, the moon ascending, Up from the east the silvery round moon, Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon, Immense and silent moon.”

“And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.”

“Night on the prairies, The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low, The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets; I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now never realized before.”

“Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon! Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand, The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam, And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue; O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.”

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.”

“After the dazzle of day is gone, Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.”

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”