A few words from Walt Whitman - "Leaves of Grass".

[pinto]

-192-

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

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.



http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Whi91LG.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

[JDPriestly]

1. Thank you. How beautiful. Sometimes we forget . . . .

[calmblueocean]

2. Beautiful.

I had to look up what a "kelson" was. It's a timber or girder fastened parallel to the keel of a ship to give it strength. So love is fastened to creation to give it strength. I love words.

[amitten]

3. And a few more, my personal favorite from Song of Myself:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they
are so placid and self-contain'd;
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied--not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth;
So they show their relations to me, and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself--they evince them plainly in their possession.