Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Behold!
This is the compost of billions of premature corpses,
Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person,
Yet Behold!
The grass covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious!
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me!
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues!
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it!
That all is clean, forever and forever!
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good!
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy!
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me!
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease!
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear those realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, begetting, dying,
They receive these in their places, they find these or the like of these, eternal, for reasons,
They find themselves eternal, they do not find that the water and soil tend to endure forever—and they not endure.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you,
None have done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
None but have found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all,
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-colored light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-colored light,
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are—you have slumbered upon yourself all your life,
Your eye-lids have been as much as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?

The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside,
I track through your windings and turnings—I come upon you where you thought eye should never come upon you.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman but as good is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are, you are to hold your own at any hazard,
These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles! you find an unfailing sufficiency!
Old, young, male, female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

Flood - tide of the river, flow on! I watch you, face to face,
Clouds of the west! sun half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-joined scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.