Life and Existence

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself, In you I wrap a thousand onward years.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, To touch my person to someone else’s is about as much as I can stand.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.