Singing in Spring by Walt Whitman

These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers: / For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy? / And who but I should be the poet of comrades? / Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world -- but soon I pass the gates, / Now along the pond-side -- now wading in a little, fearing not the wet, / Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked / from the fields, have accumulated, / Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly / cover them -- Beyond these I pass, / Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go, / Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence; / Alone, I had thought -- yet soon a silent troop gathers around me; / Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck, / They, the spirits of friends, dead or alive -- thicker they come, a great / crowd, and I in the middle, / Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them, / Plucking something for tokens -- tossing toward whoever is near me. / Here lilac, with a branch of pine, / Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida, / as it hung trailing down.

Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage, / And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-side, / (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me -- and returns again, never to / separate from me, / And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades -- this Calamus- / root[1] shall, / Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back! ) / And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut, / And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar, / These I, compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits, / Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me, / Indicating to each one what he shall have -- giving something to each. / But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve; / I will give of it -- but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.