Whitman, Walt
Walt Whitman was a poet, journalist, printer, and author of the epic poem, Leaves of Grass. Born in 1819, he became a legend, even during his lifetime. He died in 1892.

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The clock indicates the moment - but what does eternity indicate? From "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars . . . Ibid.

All truths wait in all things,
they neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it . . . Ibid.

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.

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.

Ibid.

 

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,

Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,

The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,

Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

Ibid.

 

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.

Ibid.

 

The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler south-

ward but returning northward early in the spring.

From "Our Old Feuillage," in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

 

O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,

To continue and be employ'd there all my life,

The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water,

The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam fisher . . .

From a "Song of Joys," in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

 

By every life a share or more or less,

None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is waiting.

From "Birds of Passage," in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

 

The world below the brine, Forest at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,

Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle,

openings, and pink turf,

Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play

of light through the water . . .

From "Sea-Drift" in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

 

Through him flights, swirls, screams, answering those of the fish-

hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle,

His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil,

Surrounding the essences of real things . . .

From "By Blue Ontario's Shore" in Leaves of Grass, 1855.

 

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. Specimen Days.

 

April 29&endash;As we drove lingering along the road we heard, just after sundown, the song of the wood thrush. We stopped without a word, and listened long. Ibid.

 

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. Ibid.