Friday, October 17, 2008

Poetry Friday -- Walt Whitman Explains the Water Cycle


And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed,
and yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfillment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)

by Walt Whitman
from Leaves of Grass
published in The Nature Company's FROM THIS SOIL: SELECTED POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN

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The round up this week is at Becky's Book Reviews.
The schedule of round ups is in the sidebar here.
More about Poetry Friday is here.
And information about copyright is here.

5 comments:

  1. Love it! I need to read Whitman more often.

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  2. Again, why couldn't we have read THIS bit of Whitman in school!?

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  3. I can't remember reading this one before but it is really brilliant, isn't it? He sings.

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  4. me & walt are bff. and he would consent to me saying so, if he were alive. . . ah, but he is, underneath the boot soles. . .

    many a fond memory of writing countless papers on the good grey poet. thanks for this :]

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