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I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
  beginning and the end
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
 
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
  increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
  life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is
  so.
 
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
  entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
 
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
  my soul.
 
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
 
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
  discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
 
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
  and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
  less familiar than the rest.
 
I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
  night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread.
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house
  with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
  eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
  ahead?
Other works by Walt Whitman...



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