Read "Parting Friends" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
What think you I take my pen in hand to record? / The battle-ship, perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to- / day under full sail? / The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of the night that envelops me? / Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? -- No; / But I record of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier, in the midst of / the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends; / The one to remain hung on the other's neck, and passionately kissed him, / While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.