Excerpts from the Writings of Walt Whitman
"The greatest poet hardly knows any pettiness or triviality.
If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small,
it dialates with the grandeur and life of the universe.
He is a seer...he is individual...he is complete in himself....
the other are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not...."
--from the 1855 Preface to Leaves
of Grass
"The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem"
--from the 1855 Preface to Leaves
of Grass
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and
the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for
the stupid
and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not
concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take
off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number
of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young
and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open
air every season
of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told
at school or church
or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and
your very flesh
shall be a great poem and have richest fluency not only in its
words but
in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes
of your eyes and in
every motion and joint of your body...."
--from the 1855 Preface to Leaves
of Grass
"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."
--from the 1855 Preface to Leaves
of Grass
"There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done.
They may wait awhile...
perhaps a generation or two...dropping off by degrees.
A superior breed shall take
their place...the gangs of kosmos and prophets en masse shall
take their place.
A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man,
and every man shall be his own priest....
They shall find their inspiration in real objects today, symptoms
of the past and future....
They shall arise in America and be responded to from the remainder
of the earth."
--from the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass
"One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse,
I
say the Form complete is worthier by
far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing."
--"One's-Self I Sing," from the 1867 edition of Leaves of
Grass
English 28.4
Home | Course
Schedule
created by Mark Simpson-Vos, University of North Carolina
last updated March 15, 1998