Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done, / The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

There was never any more inception than there is now,_x000D_ Nor any more youth or age than there is now;_x000D_ And will never be any more perfection than there is now,_x000D_ Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed of perfection.

...of two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends, the one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kissed him. While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.

O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures

I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself?

I see the President almost every day. I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face with its deep-cut lines, the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.

Well, every man has a religion; has something in heaven or earth which he will give up everything else for - something which absorbs him - which may be regarded by others as being useless - yet it is his dream, it is his lodestar, it is his master. That, whatever it is, seized upon me, made me its servant, slave - induced me to set aside the other ambitions a trail of glory in the heavens, which I followed, followed with a full heart. ...When once I am convinced, I never let go.

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines. Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute. Listening to others, and considering well what they say. Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating. Gently but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!_x000D_ _x000D_ O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!_x000D_ _x000D_ O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!_x000D_ _x000D_ A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support ... The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.

O America! Because you build for mankind I build for you.

I speak the password primeval; I give the sign of democracy.

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware, I sit content, And if each and all be aware, I sit content.