Leaves of Grass (1871-72)


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KOSMOS.

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 real-
         ism, spiritualism, and of the aesthetic, or intel-
         lectual,
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, insep-
         arable gether.
 
 
 
 
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