Walt Whitman on Retirement
1819–1892 United States
← All quotes by Walt Whitman
8 quotes
All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to life itself?
Ah, little recks the laborer,
How near his work is holding him to God,
The loving Laborer through space and time.
I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand — nor am I now…
Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
A word of the faith that never balks,
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.