“I believe in you, my soul …
Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat …
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning …
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson* of the creation is love …”
Walt Whitman Song Of Myself (Quoted by William James in The Varieties Of Religious Experience)
* “kelson’ or ‘keelson”: a longitudinal beam fastened to the keel of a vessel for strength and stiffness
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I was reminded of John Clare – probably because I read it yeaterday. The similarities and differences ofoutlook are interesting.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil’d or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below–above the vaulted sky.