O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth, Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes r… - Walt Whitman

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn

Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair.

But a cluster containing night's darkness and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead.

O soul, thou pleasest me — I thee;
Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time, and Space, and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me, indeed, as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear — lave me all over;
Bathe me, O God, in thee — mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.

O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath.

from “Passage to India