THOUGHTS FROM WALT WHITMAN

A child said, What is the grass?

Fetching it to me with full hand;

How could I answer the child?

I do not know what it is, any more than he....

I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrance,

Designedly dropt,

Bearing the owner’s name

Some way in the corner,

That we may see and remark and say, Whose?

* * *

Dazzling and tremendous, how quick

The sun-rise would kill me,

If I could not now and always

Send sun-rise out of me.

We also ascend,

Dazzling and tremendous as the sun;

We found our own, O my Soul,

In the calm and cool of the daybreak.

* * *

Do not weep for me,

This is not my true country, I have lived

Banish’d from my true country

—I now go back there,

I return to the Celestial Sphere,

Where every one goes in his turn.

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