Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

The friends that have it I do wrong When ever I remake a song Should know what issue is at stake, It is myself that I remake.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch.

O seasons, O châteaux, What soul is without flaws? 12

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind, The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind. And everyone will say, As you walk your mystic way, “If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and You—beside.

Much Madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Much Sense—the starkest Madness— ’Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail— Assent—and you are sane— Demur—you’re straightway dangerous— And handled with a Chain.

Except Thyself may be Thine Enemy— Captivity is Consciousness— So’s Liberty.

The Soul selects her own Society— Then—shuts the Door— To her divine Majority— Present no more—

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life!

No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.

And if I drink oblivion of a day, So shorten I the stature of my soul.

What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

Not till the fire is dying in the grate, Look we for any kinship with the stars. Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, And the great price we pay for it full worth; We have it only when we are half earth.

And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

But often in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life.

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild: Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers.

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

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 celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

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

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.