Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of
motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any further,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

Green Grass

"A child said, What is the grass? Fetching it to me
with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is,
any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may
see and remark, and say, Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among the black folks as among the white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass