Whitman's Company

Every now and again I find myself missing the company of Walt Whitman. A few years ago I spent a summer with Whitman, I took Leaves of Grass with me everywhere I read and reread his poems until they became a part of me. My family, of course thought I taking the whole thing overboard, that I was developing an unnatural obsession over a dead homosexual American poet, and perhaps they were right, perhaps I spent the summer a little obsessed with Whitman, a little in love. Today especially I miss him, his words, his phrasing, his love.
To me, the Walt Whitman I meet and befriended was a man whose love for nature and humanity knew no boundaries. His poetry was so giving and telling about life and nature which when you think about it is to be expected, but there was something else to him. For me Whitman’s words had a tendency to show me a part of myself that even I haven’t discovered. It's a hard feeling to word properly and perhaps I am not doing the experience justice, but Whitman knows what I mean and for now that is all that matters.
Whenever I pick up Leaves of Grass I can't help but imagine Walt and me sitting in a large open field with nothing but trees and crickets for company. I sit there for hours listening to him tell me about his experiences, sometimes they are rather long tales, like the Song of Myself and sometimes he will only share a few precious lines with me about a leaf revealing a frail part of himself to the world, or about his Gods, or about past presidents, or any number of things.
Whitman is the kind of poet that doesn’t take you to another land but rather shows you the beauty and the life that exists around you and within you. Perhaps I am feeling gushy today, or just a little lonely. Either way here is some Whitman to keep us all company.

This Is What You Shall Do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

To A Stranger:
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

On The Beach Alone At Night:
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

To You:
Stranger! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you
not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

Gods:

Thought of the Infinite—the All!
Be thou my God.

Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade!
Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.

Thou—thou, the Ideal Man!
Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
Complete in Body, and dilate in Spirit,
Be thou my God.

O Death—(for Life has served its turn;)
Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion!
Be thou my God.

Aught, aught, of mightiest, best, I see, conceive, or know,
(To break the stagnant tie—thee, thee to free, O Soul,)
Be thou my God.

Or thee, Old Cause, when’er advancing;
All great Ideas, the races’ aspirations,
All that exalts, releases thee, my Soul!
All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,
Be ye my Gods!

Or Time and Space!
Or shape of Earth, divine and wondrous!
Or shape in I myself—or some fair shape, I, viewing, worship,
Or lustrous orb of Sun, or star by night:
Be ye my Gods.

That Music Always Round Me:
That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning—yet long untaught I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am elated;
A tenor, strong, ascending, with power and health, with glad notes of day-break I hear,
A soprano, at intervals, sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,
A transparent bass, shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,
The triumphant tutti—the funeral wailings, with sweet flutes and violins—all
these I fill myself with;
I hear not the volumes of sound merely—I am moved by the exquisite meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence
to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think I begin to know them.