“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.”

“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.”

“Songs of myselfThese are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This the common air that bathes the globe.”

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”

“My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them”

“Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, Now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for—I awake, 150And already a thousand singers—a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, Never to die. O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me; O solitary me, listening—nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you; 155Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night, By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous’d—the fire, the sweet hell within, 160The unknown want, the destiny of me.”

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then? I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.”