Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached - Walt Whitman

It is almost incredible what a little stretch of nature will do to arouse a fellow — convert him, so to speak. I cannot think of a rarer experience than one I met on the river Saguenay, up there in Canada. The river’s water is an inky black — a curious study, I believe, to this day to the scientific men: take it up in a bucket, and it is still unmistakably black — the color of the stream. Oh! that great day! Down the stream a boat — sails open — wing-a-wing — one one side, one the other — patched, stained, heavy — but oh! how beautiful! It was a curious revelation out of little means. Wing-a-wing is rarely fine anyhow — I have not known it much in pictures — but few artists can accomplish it. See then, the large result of what may seem a small impulse. Why should we go hunt beauty then — I should rather ask — where can you go to get away from it?

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and all times all over the earth?