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Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

For over a year now, my (now thoroughly tattered and destroyed) copy has sat next to the bed. I have read from it in earnest some nights and skimmed it others.

I can't seem to organize my thoughts at the moment, but here are some highlights:

Song of Myself revels in the self and its relationship to the rest of the world, the joys of moving in and perceiving the world. This stanza particularly resonates with me:

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Song of the Open Road is such a perfect paean to life that, if you have not read it recently or ever, then I implore you to do so now. Some of it might sound familiar to those who attended a certain July '07 ceremony.

On the Beach at Night Alone:
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer:
When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.