Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

I swear they are all beautiful!
Every one that sleeps is beautiful—every thing in the dim light is beautiful,
The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.

Peace is always beautiful,
The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

The myth of heaven indicates the soul;
The soul is always beautiful—it appears more or it appears less—it comes or it lags behind,
It comes from its embowered garden, and looks pleasantly on itself, and encloses the world,
Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and clean the womb cohering,
The head well-grown, proportioned, plumb, and the bowels and joints proportioned and plumb.

The soul is always beautiful,
The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place,
What is arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;
The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,
The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,
The sleepers that lived and died wait—the far advanced are to go on in their turns, and the far behind are to go on in their turns,
The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite—they unite now.

The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed,
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,
Learned and unlearned are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,
The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck,
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,
The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarmed by friend,
The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar—the wronged is made right,
The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master salutes the slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is relieved,
The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distressed head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open, the paralysed become supple,
The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake.

I too pass from the night!
I stay awhile away O night, but I return to you again, and love you!

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid—I have been well brought forward by you,
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,
I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you—but I know I came well, and shall go well.

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,
I will duly pass the day, O my mother, and duly return to you.

Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, here then are faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
The spiritual prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top,
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanched faces of orthodox citizens,
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face,
The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or despised face,
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children,
The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,
A wild hawk, his wings clipped by the clipper,
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then are faces!
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man
Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,
Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage;
Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites,
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in nails,
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer’s knife with a half-pulled scabbard.

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

Those then are really men, the bosses and tufts of the great round globe!

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot trick me.

I see your rounded never-erased flow,
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum,
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every inch as good as myself.

The Lord advances, and yet advances!
Always the shadow in front! always the reached hand bringing up the laggards!

Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming,
I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
I hear victorious drums.

This face is a life-boat,
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,
This face is flavored fruit, ready for eating,
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken I except not one—red, white, black, all are deific,
In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.