The Essential Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

always to come unfolded,

       Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the

       superbest man of the earth,

       Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,

       Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be

       form’d of perfect body,

       Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the

       poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)

       Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence

       can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,

       Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman

       love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,

       Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds

       of the man’s brain, duly obedient,

       Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,

       Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;

       A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but

       every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;

       First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.

What Am I After All

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      What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own

       name? repeating it over and over;

       I stand apart to hear — it never tires me.

      To you your name also;

       Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in

       the sound of your name?

Kosmos

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      Who includes diversity and is Nature,

       Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of

       the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also,

       Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing,

       or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,

       Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,

       Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,

       spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual,

       Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good,

       Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body

       understands by subtle analogies all other theories,

       The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;

       Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in

       other globes with their suns and moons,

       Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day

       but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,

       The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

Others May Praise What They Like

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      Others may praise what they like;

       But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art

       or aught else,

       Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the

       western prairie-scent,

       And exudes it all again.

Who Learns My Lesson Complete?

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      Who learns my lesson complete?

       Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,

       The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,

       clerk, porter and customer,

       Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy — draw nigh and commence;

       It is no lesson — it lets down the bars to a good lesson,

       And that to another, and every one to another still.

      The great laws take and effuse without argument,

       I am of the same style, for I am their friend,

       I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.

      I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons

       of things,

       They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

      I cannot say to any person what I hear — I cannot say it to myself —

       it is very wonderful.

      It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so

       exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or

       the untruth of a single second,

       I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,

       nor ten billions of years,

       Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans

       and builds a house.

      I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,

       Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,

       Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.

      Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;

       I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and

       how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,

       And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of

       summers and winters to articulate and walk — all this is

       equally wonderful.

      And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other

       without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see

       each other, is every bit as wonderful.

      And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,

       And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to

       be true, is just as wonderful.

      And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is

       equally wonderful,

       And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally

       wonderful.

Tests

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