Monday Morning Whitman

flowers in meadowHere is an excerpt from a poem in Leaves of Grass.  The imagery provides a welcome respite for the senses, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

There Was a Child Went Forth

  There was a child went forth every day,
  And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
  And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
  Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

  The early lilacs became part of this child,
  And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red
      clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
  And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the
      mare’s foal and the cow’s calf,
  And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,
  And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the
      beautiful curious liquid,
  And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

 

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