Walt Whitman

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

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

I believe in the flesh and the appetites; Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

A man is not a whole man without a woman... and a woman is not a whole woman without a man.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far.

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 make my way to the hospital, and stay there for hours, among the wounded, to give them what comfort I can, and to read to them, and to write letters for them.

Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.

I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there.

Nothing is ever ended, everything is always beginning.

The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.

Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who reject you, and insult you, and smite you?

The great poet digests the experience of the world and returns it in the form of a song.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.

I am the sworn poet of the new, modern, democratic man.

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking. Give me now libidinous joys only, Give me the drench of my passions, Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet, Bathing myself, bathing my songs in sex.