One ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture,
and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. - Goethe
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Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
The armies of those I love engirth me.
As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near to the heart of the world as I can.
- John Muir
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And disrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
- Walt Whitman, Song of MyselfThe grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
- John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
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