Free Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions by Walt Whitman Page A

whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches... and shall master all attachment.
    The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the day break or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse... he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover... he is sure... he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him... suffering and darkness cannot—death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth... he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty.
    The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss... it is inevitable as life . . . it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same. These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods... that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself... that it is profuse and impartial... that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth or sea without it—nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance ... one part does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ... the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the hand somest measure and similes and sound.
    Without effort and without exposing in the least how it is done the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons some more and some less to bear on your individual character as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the laws that pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must surely be there and the clue of it must be there... and the faintest indication is the indication of the best and then becomes the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not dis joined but joined. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet... he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson... he places himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions... he finally ascends and finishes all ... he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond... he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown...