The Prairie-Grass Dividing |
The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing, |
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, |
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, |
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, |
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, |
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and |
command, leading not following, |
Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, |
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors, as to say Who are you? |
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient, |
Those of inland America. |
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman |
The tree of life and the serpent draw the physical powers of life itself, the life force and its flower of consciousness. In the early garden the serpent was not the antagonist but was the embodiment of the cosmic order itself. Each human life is imprinted with the cosmic order from which it originated and grows on the tree of life as an individual within the vast system of cosmic life.
To A Stranger |
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, |
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me |
as a dream,) |
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you. |
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, |
chaste, and matured. |
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me. |
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours |
only nor left my body mine only. |
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you |
take of my beard, breast, hands, in return. |
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or |
wake at night alone, |
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again. |
I am to see to it that I do not lose you. |
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman |