LEAVES OF GRASS, excerpts

 

 

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“I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! How I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”

"storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing...

and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.”

“For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! ”

“Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.”

“All music is what awakes within us
when 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 singing
his sweet romanza; not that of the men's chorus,
Nor that of the women's chorus -
It is nearer and farther than they”

“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”

― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass