The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep, The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps, The murderer that is to be hung next da… - Walt Whitman

they may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small themes … but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects … they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls.

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, / No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.