WALT WHITMAN – LEAVES OF GRASS 1860
TO YOU
Stranger! if you, passing, meet me,
and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you
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O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE-BOY
O Tan-Faced prairie-boy!
Before you came to camp, came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food-
till at last among the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give-
we but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts
of the world, you gave me.
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MOTHER AND BABE – 1865
I see the sleeping babe,
nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe – hush’d,
I study them long and long
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A PRAIRIE SUNSET – November Boughs 1888
Shot gold, maroon and violet,
dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,
The earth’s whole amplitude
and Nature’s multoform power
consign’d for once to colors;
The light, the general air possess’d by them –
colors till now unknown,
No limit. confine – not the Western sky alone –
the high meridian –
North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent
shadows to the last.
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Tribute to the Memory of the Poet Rod McKuen whose Birthday falls Today, April 29, his favourite Poet was Walt Whitman.
Thanks to “Spoken Word” Read by Tom Bedlam
