Literary Rapture...

I cannot recommend any collection of personal expression more highly than this wonderful timeless classic, "Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman". He was a romantic idealist, a selfless martyr, a humanist poet who created a bridge between the transcendental and the empirical. And yet, at the same time he was no one, just a man who wanted to leave the world feeling like he had made a difference. We should all learn from this exceptional human being. I won't continue trying to explain his work, for my words will sound dull and insignificant in their attempt to illuminate his greatness. JUST READ IT! Here are some extracts;

[5]

I believe in you my soul.... the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

Loaf 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,

How 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 bare-stripped heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,

And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.

[LII]

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, 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..........."

FOR him I sing, 

(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:) 

With time and space I him dilate—and fuse the immortal laws, 

To make himself, by them, the law unto himself.

52. To a Stranger

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,

You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,

All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me, 

I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,

I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,

I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

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

stars.

[21] Song of Myself 

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with
me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into new tongue.

"Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me."

- Walt Whitman