Read "Miracles" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
1. What shall I give? and which are my miracles?
2. Realism is mine -- my miracles -- Take freely, / Take without end -- I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or / your eyes reach.
3. Why! who makes much of a miracle? / As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, / Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, / Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, / Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, / Or stand under trees in the woods, / Or talk by day with any one I love -- or sleep in the bed at night with any / one I love, / Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, / Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, / Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, / Or animals feeding in the fields, / Or birds -- or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, / Or the wonderfulness of the sundown -- or of stars shining so quiet and bright, / Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; / Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best -- mechanics, / boatmen, farmers, / Or among the savans -- or to the _soirée_ -- or to the opera. / Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, / Or behold children at their sports, / Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, / Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, / Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; / These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, / The whole referring -- yet each distinct and in its place.
4. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, / Every inch of space is a miracle, / Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, / Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; / Every spear of grass -- the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all / that concerns them, / All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
To me the sea is a continual miracle; / The fishes that swim -- the rocks -- the motion of the waves -- the ships, with / men in them, / What stranger miracles are there?