Showing posts with label #Walt Whitman # This what you shall do # Leaves of Grass # Philosophy # Quotations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Walt Whitman # This what you shall do # Leaves of Grass # Philosophy # Quotations. Show all posts

Thursday 26 March 2020

Walt Whitman (31/5/1819 -26/3/1892) - This is what you shall do.


Remembering Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, journalist who died  on this day in 1892, with his timeless advice on living a vibrant and rewarding life. It''s an excerpt from the preface of the 1855 edition  to his verse collection Leaves of Grass. 
We are currently living in unsettling times, so thought I'd share a beautiful quote , that  contains a truth that remains undiminished since it was originally written..

" This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one 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 of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, 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."

Here's some earlier posts of mine on Walt :-

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/happy-birthday-walt-whitman-legendary.html


https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/05/walt-whitman-3151819-263-92-poets-to.html?spref=pi