Walt Whitman - The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

“… in truth
Is but another name for absolute power,
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And reason in her most exalted mood.”

“And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow:
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

“I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

“I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)

“I exist as I am – that is enough;
If no other in the world be aware I sit content;
And if each one 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.”

“Of and in all these things
I have dream’d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed,
I have dream’d that heroes and good doers shall be under the present and past law,
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law,
For I have dream’d that the law they are under now is enough.”