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traveltounravel 's review for:
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
"Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature."
These Walt Whitman words may be the best way to describe his 400-poem-filled book as he professes his love for almost everything in existence. I couldn't help but imagine him standing upon a mountain shouting/singing each of his poems, smiling, with the setting sun beaming upon his face. His love for forests, mountains, rivers, animals, humanity, America, the sea, life, death, love, each leaf of grass, shines through each of his poems. This is a daunting collection of poetry written over the course of his life that took me nearly 6 months to complete as Whitman's poetry takes a peaceful, patient mind to feel as he did.
"What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more then all the print I have in my life."
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars."
"In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death."
"To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them!
To gather the love out of their hearts!
To take your own lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you!
To know the universe itself as a road-as many roads-as roads for traveling souls."
THE VOICE OF THE RAIN.
"And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed,
and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own
origin, and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd. duly with love returns.)"
A PRAIRIE SUNSET
"Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver,
emerald, fawn,
The earth's whole amplitude and nature's multi-
form power consigned for once to colors;
The light, the genial air possessed by them—
colors till now unknown,
No limit, confine—not the Western sky alone—
the high meridian—North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows
to the last."
These Walt Whitman words may be the best way to describe his 400-poem-filled book as he professes his love for almost everything in existence. I couldn't help but imagine him standing upon a mountain shouting/singing each of his poems, smiling, with the setting sun beaming upon his face. His love for forests, mountains, rivers, animals, humanity, America, the sea, life, death, love, each leaf of grass, shines through each of his poems. This is a daunting collection of poetry written over the course of his life that took me nearly 6 months to complete as Whitman's poetry takes a peaceful, patient mind to feel as he did.
"What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more then all the print I have in my life."
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars."
"In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death."
"To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them!
To gather the love out of their hearts!
To take your own lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you!
To know the universe itself as a road-as many roads-as roads for traveling souls."
THE VOICE OF THE RAIN.
"And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed,
and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own
origin, and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd. duly with love returns.)"
A PRAIRIE SUNSET
"Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver,
emerald, fawn,
The earth's whole amplitude and nature's multi-
form power consigned for once to colors;
The light, the genial air possessed by them—
colors till now unknown,
No limit, confine—not the Western sky alone—
the high meridian—North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows
to the last."