From song of myself

From song of myself.

XXXI

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

Walt Whitman

There's plenty in the world

There's plenty in the world 

There's plenty in the world that doth not die,
And much that lives to perish,
That rises and then falls, buds but to wither;
The season's sun, though he should know his setting
Up to the second of the dark coming,
Death sights and sees with great misgiving
A rib of cancer on the fluid sky.
But we, shut in the houses of the brain,
Brood on each hothouse plant
Spewing its sapless leaves around,
And watch the hand of time unceasingly
Ticking the world away,
Shut in the madhouse call for cool air to breathe.
There's plenty that doth die;
Time cannot heal nor resurrect;
And yet, mad with young blood or stained with age,
We still are loth to part with what remains,
Feeling the wind abaut our heads that does not cool,
And on our lips the dry mouth of the rain.