Maybe not the type of cloud Whitman had in mind when he wrote:
Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset – earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for mysake!
But still an interesting experiment using the entire text of “Song of Myself” and a handy-dandy website that goes by the handle Wordle. We have also been having fun finding what I am calling “Walt Whitmanisms,” which are aphorisms that only Walt could pen, and more are always welcome in the comments section below.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
“I inhale great draughts of space”
other great ones:
“I am grandeur than I thought”
“I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines”
“Urge and Urge and Urge”
Two more (the first one from class today):
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse”
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.”
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” – this is from song of myself
I found another one on the internet by Whitman which is not from Song of Myself but I like it a lot:
“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”
“All goes onwards and outward, nothing collaspes”
“And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”
“Whoever degrades another degrades me.”
“Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn”
“I resist any thing better than my own diversity”
“I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to b the poet of wickedness also”
“I accept Reality and dare not question it”
“To be in any form, what is that?”
“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, you must travel it for yourself”
“I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself/
And what I assume you assume,/
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you”
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself”
“My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths”
“Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?”
Nice job so far. Keep ‘em coming. My personal favorite is the one Elizabeth found: “I accept Reality and dare not question it.” (This should have been one of our TOK quotes last week . . .)
“I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”
“My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,”
“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?”
“I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,”
“You are also asking me questions and I hear you, answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.”
POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse—for you must justify me—you must answer.
– Whitman, Poets to Come
Truer words were never spoke…
Keep it up, Norway!