Quotes from Walt Whitman

morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

Loafe with me on the grass.... loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want.... not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning; You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart, And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, / No birth, identity, form - no object of the world. / Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;... / The body, sluggish, aged, cold - the embers left from earlier fires, / The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing and idiom and tongue.

If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe.

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

Your breath falls around me like dew

What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it satisfies—it is great; But there is something else very great—it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.

Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.

The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die

The earth recedes from me into the night, I saw that it was beautiful . . . . and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.

From imperfection's murkiest cloud, Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, One flash of Heaven's glory. -from Song of the Universal

Low hangs the moon, it rose late,  It is lagging - O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys! To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on! To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports, A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,) A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity, Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous . . . Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology.

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, Else it were time lost listening to me.

Allons! the road is before us! Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.