Walt Whitman

“Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.”

“Eravamo insieme. Tutto il resto del mondo l'ho scordato.”

“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.”

“I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,And I become the other dreamers.”

“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“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.The early lilacs became part of this child,And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,And the song of the phoebe-bird,And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.”

“Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.”

“Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?”

“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses;And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

“The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,They scorn the best I can do to relate them.”

“I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell”

“All music is what awakes within uswhen we are reminded by the instruments;It is not the violins or the clarinets -It is not the beating of the drums -Nor the score of the baritone singinghis sweet romanza; not that of the men's chorus,Nor that of the women's chorus -It is nearer and farther than they”

“Why should I wish to see God better than this day?I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,And I leave them where they are,for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.”

“Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!from Strophe 21, "Song of Myself”

“LET us twain walk aside from the rest; Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony, Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none—Tell me the whole story, Tell me what you would not tell your brother, wife, husband, or physician.”

“I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; 5I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest; I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.”

“dash me with amorous wet, i can repay you”

“I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.”

“Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently chrystallize.”

“What will be will be well — for what is is well,To take interest is well, and not to take interest is well.”

“Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.To YouWHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. O I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you; None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows—these interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.”

“O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.”

“Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”

“I see great things in baseball.”

“I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again / I am to see to it that I do not lose you”

“Resist much.”

“Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, when I give I give myself.”

“O, to be a ruler of life-- not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes-- no ennui-- no more complaints or scornful criticisms. O me repellent and ugly, O to these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior Soul impregnable, And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.”

“Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.”

“The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer...”

“I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.”

“Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from; The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer, This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.”

“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.”

“Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.) ”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

“Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.Do you take it I would astonish?Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods?Do I astonish more than they?This hour I tell things in confidence,I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the the largest”

“Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?”

“I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys of Switzerland - I mark the long winters and the isolation.”

“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 exist as I am, that is enough,If no other in the world be aware I sit content,And if each and all be aware I sit content.One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself.”

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. ”

“Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping,I discover myself on the verge of the usual mistake.”

“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

“The sum of all known value and respect, I add up in you, whoever you are.”

“And I or you pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth.”

“Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be.”

“Love the earth and sun and animals,Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,Stand up for the stupid and crazy,Devote your income and labor to others...And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

“Peace is always beautiful.”