As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Every hour, every atom, everywhere is chock with miracles,
All the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any—
What is there that is not a miracle?

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle—
All wondrous, the wonders that fill each minute of time forever, and each acre of surface and space forever,
Each foot out of the countless octillions of the cubic leagues of space crammed full of absolute or relative wonders.

The gentle soft-born measureless light—the miracle spreading bathing all—
The vacant spaciousness of the air, and the veil’d blue of the heavens,
Seem miracles enough;
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

O amazement of things—
Earth, rocks, flowers, stars, rain, snow my amaze, even the least particle!
What is more amazing than the sunrise, the day, the floods of light enveloping the fields, waters, grass, trees, persons?

Each leaf and branch of endless foliage, is a lit-up miracle,
The lilac bush—every leaf a miracle,
That delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass,
Awakening me to know the most positive wonder in the world—what we call life.
The pismire is equally perfect, and the egg of a wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.

Whether I stand under trees in the woods,
Or watch animals feeding in the fields,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
(What greater miracles than all the wonderful new mechanism of our day?)
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or whether I go among mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans, or to the soiree, or to the opera,
Or behold the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles—
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things,
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen,
I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say it to myself —it is very wonderful.
I never believe in the impossible—
The impossible is the likeliest thing to happen.

I am looking in your eyes—tell me then, if you can,
What can you conceive more wonderful than what you see around us?
What can you conceive of or name to me in the future that shall be beyond the least thing around us?
Nothing can be conceived of by the fancy more wonderful than what we see.

But my eyesight, my own eyes and figure in the glass, equally wonderful—
What is there in the immortality of the soul more incomprehensible than this spiritual and beautiful miracle of sight?—
And how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.

Come! I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as wonderful;
Those curious incredible miracles you call eyesight or hearing,
The frames, limbs, organs, and spirits of men and women, and all that concerns them,
The wonder everyone sees in every one else he sees,
Are unspeakably perfect miracles.

My miracles take freely, take without end,
The sane, silent, beauteous miracles that envelope and fuse me,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—
I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you, or your eyes reach.

NEXT: PERFECT ORDER

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).