Walt Whitman

 

"The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing."

"A child said What is grass? fetching it to one with full hands
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of the hopeful green stuff woven.
of I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?...
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

Song of Myself, 1855

"Nothing endures but personal qualities."

"Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death."

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, 1865-1866

"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

Song of the Open Road

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself."

Song of Myself, 1855

"I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends."

I Dream'd in a Dream

"Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty year old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you."

Full of life now

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