Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1856)

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20—Faith Poem.

I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is
pre-occupied of his own soul;

I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given
time, there waits for me more which I do not
know;

I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside
         the hands and face I am cognizant of, are
         now looking faces I am not cognizant of —
         calm and actual faces;

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the
world is latent in any iota of the world;

I do not doubt there are realizations I have
         no idea of, waiting for me through time
         and through the universes—also upon this
         earth;

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni-
verses are limitless—in vain I try to think
how limitless;

I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of
orbs, play their swift sports through the air

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on purpose—and that I shall one day be
eligible to do as much as they, and more than
they;

I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities,
insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds,
rejected refuse, than I have supposed;

I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have
         supposed—and more in all men and women
         —and more in my poems than I have
         supposed;

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and
on, millions of years;

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and
         exteriors have their exteriors—and that the
         eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hear-
         ing another hearing, and the voice another
         voice;

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths
         of young men are provided for—and that the
         deaths of young women, and the deaths of
         little children, are provided for;

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter
         what the horrors of them—no matter whose
         wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone
         down—are provided for, to the minutest
         point;

I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malig-
nance, are provided for;

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I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the
remainder of the earth, politics, freedom,
degradations, are carefully provided for;

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen,
any where, at any time, is provided for, in
the inherences of things.

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