Notes for Select Whitman Poems

AH, whispering, something again, unseen,

Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,

Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing

Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;

Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art,

(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest—and this is of them,)

So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within—thy soothing fingers on my face and hands,

Thou, messenger-magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,

(Distances balkd—occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)

I feel the sky, the prairies vast—I feel the mighty northern lakes,

I feel the ocean and the forest—somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space;

Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone—haply from endless store, God-sent,

(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)

Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell,

Art thou not universal concretes distillation? Laws, all Astronomys last refinement?

Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?