“Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul” – Walt Whitman

Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone 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 or families.

Re-examine all you have been told
in 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.

~ Walt Whitman ~ Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition

~A Song of the Rolling Earth~

Were you thinking that those were the words, Those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words, The substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air, they are in you…

The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth, The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible words… To her children the words of the eloquent dumb Great mother never fail…

Say on, sayers! Sing on, singers! Delve! mould! Pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are prepared and ready, The architects shall appear.

~ Walt Whitman ~ Leaves of Grass

Related:

* Children of a Creative Universe * Yūgen (幽玄) – Deep Awareness of the Universe * The Universe is One Harmonious Whole  * Human Beings are Creative by Nature *  How We Participate in the Creative Life of the Universe  * How Wisdom Grows  *