Love, that is day and night - love, that is sun and moon and stars, Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume, no other words but words of love, no other thought but love.
Walt WhitmanWhen lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, / I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Walt WhitmanNote, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)โScience, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the worldโa sun, mounting, most illuminating, most gloriousโsurely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.
Walt WhitmanWhen I heard the learnโd astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wanderโd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Lookโd up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman