Society and the World

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

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

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.

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.

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!

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!

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!)

All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

What troops Of generous boys in happiness thus bred— Saturnians through life’s Tempe led, Went from the North and came from the South, With golden mottoes in the mouth, To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

Ef you want peace, the thing you’ve gut tu du Is jes’ to show you’re up to fightin’, tu.

I don’t believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.

Ez fer war, I call it murder— There you hev it plain an’ flat; I don’t want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that.

Ez fer war, I call it murder— There you hev it plain an’ flat; I don’t want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.