Walt Whitman
Copyright 2004. Pat @ Close. All Rights Reserved.
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Leaves of Grass

A Walt Whitman Collection

Book II. Starting From Paumanok

Chapter VIII

What are you doing young man?
Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business whatever it may be?

It is well--against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,
But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion`s sake,
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
     life of the earth,
Any more than such are to religion.