I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute towards me. - Walt Whitman

The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer ... he is individual... he is complete in himself... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.

Poetic style, when address'd to the Soul, is less definite form, outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half-tints, and even less than half- tints. True, it may be architecture; but again it may be the forest wild-wood, or the best effects thereof, at twilight, the waving oaks and cedars in the wind, and the impalpable odor.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise
would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of
me.
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of
the daybreak.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and
volumes of
worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision.... it is unequal to
measure itself.
It provokes me forever,
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand
enough.... why don’t
you let it out then?
Come now I will not be tantalized.... you conceive
too much of articulation.
Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?
Waiting in gloom protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts.... it keeping tally with
the
meaning of things,
Happiness.... which whoever hears me let him or
her set out in
search of this day.