this much is true

 

We were together. I forget the rest.

 

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We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.


—Walt Whitman

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I and this mystery here we stand. —Walt Whitman

 

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It seems to me that the life of man on earth is like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your captains and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall. Outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one window of the hall and out through another. 

While he is inside, the bird is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. So man appears on earth for a little while – but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.


—The Venerable Bede
History of the English People, 731 AD

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with you

 

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Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)


–Walt Whitman
full of life now

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not to worry

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I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time.

–Walt Whitman

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wait - what?

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part 48

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I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.


–Walt Whitman
Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass

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all goes onward and outward

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The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed,
and luckier.


–Walt Whitman

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song of myself

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I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end;

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now;

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge, and urge, and urge;

Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always
substance and increase, always sex;

Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always
a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail—learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights,
well entretied, braced in the beams,

Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,

I and this mystery, here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that
is not my Soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,

Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age;

Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things,
while they discuss I am silent,

and go bathe and admire myself.


–Walt Whitman

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