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.