Walt Whitman

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.

The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,_x000D_ _x000D_ Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,_x000D_ _x000D_ Strong and content I travel the open road.

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete,_x000D_ _x000D_ The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

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 the 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.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.

I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost . The body sluggish, aged, cold, the ember left from earlier fires shall duly flame again.

Thought Of equality- as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself- as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.

My words itch at your ears till you understand them

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

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 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.

I will You, in all, Myself, with promise to never desert you, To which I sign my name.

Unscrew the locks from the doors ! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !

I and this mystery, here we stand.

O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.

From this hour, freedom! Going where I like, my own master.