SONG OF MYSELF – Walt Whitman (1)

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have
you reckoned the earth much?

Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall
possess the origin of all poems,
You shall posses the good of the earth and sun
…..there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third
hand….nor look through the eyes of the dead
…. nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from
yourself.

I have heard what the talkers were talking …..the
talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is
now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is
now,
Not any more heaven or hell than there is now.
-Edited by Stephen Mitchell