Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1871-72)

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WHO LEARNS MY LESSON COMPLETE?

¹ 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.

² 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.

³ I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things,
and the reasons of things;

They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen.

⁴ I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say
it to myself—it is very wonderful.

⁵ 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.

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⁶ 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.

⁷ Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every
one is immortal;

I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally won-
derful, 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.

⁸ 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.

⁹ 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.

¹⁰ 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.

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