Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Person
celebrating the dignity and
wonder of each human being
Poems on Personhood
- Editor's note: these poems are dedicated to Jonathan Buscher, who introduced me
to these writings.
- Song of
Myself
- Walt Whitman
- I celebrate myself,
- And what I assume
you shall assume,
- For every atom
belonging to me as good belongs to you.
-
- I loaf and invite
my soul,
- I lean and loaf at
my ease ....
- observing a spear
of summer grass.
-
- I exist as I am,
that is enough,
- If no
other in the world be aware, I sit content,
- And if
each and all be aware, I sit content.
-
- One world is aware,
and by far the largest to me,
- and that is myself,
- And whether I come
to my own today
- or in ten thousand
or ten million years,
- I can cheerfully
take it now,
- or with equal
cheerfulness I can wait.
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- I'm Nobody
- Emily Dickinson
- I'm Nobody! Who are you?
- Are you – Nobody -- too?
- Then there's a pair of us!
- Don't tell! they'd banish us you know!
-
- How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
- How public -- like a Frog --
- To tell your name -- the livelong June --
- To an admiring Bog!
********************************************
- Me
- Walter de la Mare
- As long as I live
- I shall always be
- My Self -- and no other,
- Just me.
-
- Like a tree.
-
- Like a willow or elder,
- An aspen, a thorn,
- Or a cypress forlorn.
- Like a flower,
- For its hour
- A primrose, a pink,
- Or a violet --
- Sunned by the sun,
- And with dewdrops wet.
Always just me.
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