This is what you should do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone 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 ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

This hour I tell things in confidence/ I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

The real war will never get in the books.

I tramp a perpetual journey.

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.