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Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892

"Poems By Walt Whitman"


Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood,
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed--to look on my rose-coloured flesh,
To be conscious of my body, so happy, so large,
To be this incredible God I am,
To have gone forth among other Gods--those men and women I love.
Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and
on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches and
leaves!
Surely there is something more in each of the trees--some living soul.
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching me and
America!
I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them
forward.
I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of
the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.


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