Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating forever the triumph of things,
Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last, illustrious every one!
Manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect,
And the imponderable fluids are perfect.

The law of perfection is to each for itself and onward from itself, is profuse and impartial,
There is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth and sea without it,
Nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events;
The whole universe is a vast procession with perfect measured motion.

O, nature! perfect in imperfection—
Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfection’s murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light.

Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward eternity.
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
I show that size is only development,
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
The smallest the same and the largest the same,
No one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing.

There can be nothing small or useless in the universe,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(I do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else.)
I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d—
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place,
The moth and the fish eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place,
What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in its place;
The far advanced are to go on in their turns,
And the far behind are to come on in their turns.

There is in the make-up of every superior human identity a wondrous intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifarious mad chaos of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness—this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness—we call the world.
I know everything in this world is a compromise—
There is always an opposite word somewhere—
I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
(The between something or other is more worthwhile than all the rest.)

Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all,
The eternal fitness and equanimity of things—
How perfect!

I plead for my brothers and sisters,
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death,
It is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is happiness,
A vast, clear scheme, each learner learning it for himself.

The heart of man alone is the one unbalanced and restless thing in the world,
But for all that, nigh, at hand, see, a wonder beyond any of them,
Namely, one’s-self, the darkest labyrinth, mightiest wonder.

NEXT: THE SELF

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).