Whitman Walt - Meditations of Walt Whitman: Earth, My Likeness

Clarke from A Song For Occupations Terry Tempest Williams from A Song Of The Rolling Earth Bhagavad Gita from A Song Of The Rolling Earth Jesus of Nazareth from Song Of The Universal (Birds Of Passage) John Bunyan from To You (Birds Of Passage) Henry David Thoreau from As I Ebbd With The Ocean Of Life (Sea-Drift) Philip Simmons from On The Beach At Night and On The Beach At Night Alone (Sea-Drift) Friedrich Nietzsche Gods (By The Roadside) Florence Page Jaques The Dalliance Of The Eagles (By The Roadside) Carl Jung from Rise O Days From Your Fathomless Deeps (Drum-Taps) Vi Hilbert Bivouac On A Mountain Side (Drum-Taps) Sarah Orne Jewett As Toilsome I Wanderd Virginias Woods (Drum-Taps) Ralph Waldo Emerson from Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun (Drum-Taps) Abraham Lincoln from When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomd (Memories Of President Lincoln) Marc Chagall from When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomd (Memories Of President Lincoln) Lord Byron from As Consequent, Etc. (Autumn Rivulets) Leonardo da Vinci from The Return Of The Heroes (Autumn Rivulets) Denise Chavez from The Return Of The Heroes (Autumn Rivulets) Aristotle from This Compost (Autumn Rivulets) John Burroughs from Warble For Lilac-Time (Autumn Rivulets) Crowfoot from Outlines For A Tomb (Autumn Rivulets) Charles Lindbergh Miracles (Autumn Rivulets) Edith M. Thomas Kosmos (Autumn Rivulets) Frederick Douglass from Proud Music Of The Storm bell hooks from Passage To India Mundaka Upanishad from Passage To India Anna Botsford Comstock A Noiseless Patient Spider (Whispers Of Heavenly Death) Friedrich von Schiller from The Mystic Trumpeter (From Noon To Starry Night) Song of a Baul of Bengal Spirit That Formd This Scene (From Noon To Starry Night) Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Song At Sunset (Songs Of Parting) Helen Keller from Song At Sunset (Songs Of Parting) Quran from Camps Of Green (Songs Of Parting) Celia Laighton Thaxter As They Draw To A Close (Songs Of Parting) Gautama Buddha Now Finale To The Shore (Songs Of Parting) Alice Walker Continuities (Sands At Seventy) Torah The Voice Of The Rain (Sands At Seventy) Henri Matisse Soon Shall The Winters Foil Be Here (Sands At Seventy) Meridel Le Sueur A Prairie Sunset (Sands At Seventy) Thomas Merton Old Ages Lambent Peaks (Sands At Seventy) Carl Sagan To The Sun-set Breeze (Good-Bye My Fancy) Suzanne Walker A Persian Lesson (Good-Bye My Fancy) Walt Whitman You Shall Be A Great Poem from Preface (Leaves Of Grass, 1855 edition) Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my youth, Thou knowest my manhoods solemn and visionary meditations, Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee, Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them, Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee ~ Walt Whitman from Prayer of Columbus Introduction 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 W ith these buoyant, libertarian words, Walt Whitman (18191892), the consummate American poet of the earth, invites us along on his journey universal. He is, for us, the vagabond voyager of the soul. Or, to mix and shake the metaphor, he is the seasoned salt of the earth, sprinkling himself over the landscape and giving our steps a savory taste. Walt Whitman traveled across the continent, soaking the ink of the wilds and the urban into his pen.

His long brown path stretched out from his home in Long Island, New York, to Brooklyn, New Orleans, Chicago, Washington and New Jersey. Working variously as a printer, journalist, teacher and Civil War nurse, Whitman deeply felt the pulse of his native land, and came away with dark blood on his hands and a light song on his lips. Fearless and open-minded in the face of what remain the most difficult issues of the land the environment, labor, the economy, politics, religion, war, justice Whitman found his voice in singing the voices of the masses, and the single individual, and the road, and the blades of grass. Whitman is the great American poet. Yet he is a world poet too, a cosmic traveler tracing the course of stars and planets reflected in lakes, rivers, eyes and bloodstreams. To set out afoot and light-hearted with him is to venture beyond every single one of our accepted sensibilities into a sensual world in which Whitman wraps his arm around our waist like an embracing vine and leads on.