Leaves of Grass (1856)
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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 cus- tomer? editor, author, artist, and school- boy? |
| 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. |
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| I cannot say to any person what I hear—I
cannot say it to myself—it is very won- derful. |
| It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe
moving so exactly in its orbit forever 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 decillions of years, |
| Nor planned 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 eye-sight is
equally wonderful, and how I was con- ceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful, |
| And how I was not palpable once, but am now —
and was born on the last day of May in the Year 43 of America—and passed from a |
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| babe, in the creeping trance of three summers
and three winters, to articulate and walk — all this is equally wonderful, |
| And that I grew six feet high, and that I have
become a man thirty-six years old in the Year 79 of America, and that I am here anyhow, are all 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. |
| Come! I should like to hear you tell me what
there is in yourself that is not just as won- derful, |
| And I should like to hear the name of anything
between Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful. |
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