Additional Whitman Quotes

Additional Whitman Quotes

	The question, O me! so sad, recurring–What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer That you are here–that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
	I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.
	I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough, None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough, None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is.
	Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet? Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
	Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
	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.
	What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are all alive and well somewhere, 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 ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contained between my hat and boots, And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of all people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.) I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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*updated 9-29-01*