Excerpts from

Song of Myself

There is that in me--I do no know what it is--but I know it is in me.

...I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

...Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal
life--it is Happiness.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

...Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

--Walt Whitman, 1855