object:1.whitman - Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
author class:Walt Whitman
subject class:Poetry
book class:Whitman - Poems
class:chapter
WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprenticechurchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinkerparents and offspringmerchant,
clerk, porter and customer,
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboyDraw nigh and commence;
It is no lessonit lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.
The great laws take and effuse without argument;
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quitsI do not halt, and make salaams.
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 hearI cannot say it to myselfit
is very wonderful.
It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the
untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
nor ten billions of years,
Nor plann'd and built one thing after another, as an architect plans
and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how
I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful;
And pass'd from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers
and winters, to articulate and walkAll this is equally
wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each
other, is every bit as wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these, is just as wonderful;
And that I can remind you, and you think them, and know them to be
true, is just as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is
equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars, is equally
wonderful.
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