“Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
More from Walt Whitman
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
“When I give, I give myself.”
“I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, I…”
“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”