< Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu
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191
Chants Democratic.
:Dwell a while, and pass on—Be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,
- And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
- And may be just as much as the seasons.
- Me imperturbe,
- Me standing at ease in Nature,
- Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
- Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they,
- Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought;
- Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary all these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with the best—I am not subordinate;)
- Me toward the Mexican Sea, or in the Mannahatta, or the Tennessee, or far north, or inland,
- A river-man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life of These States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada,
- Me, wherever my life is to be lived, to be self-balanced for contingencies!
- O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.
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