Leaves of Grass (1860)/Kosmos

by Walt Whitman

Layout 2

KOSMOS.

Who includes diversity, and is Nature,
Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness
and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity
of the earth, and the equilibrium also,
Who has not looked forth from the windows, the eyes,
for nothing, or whose brain held audience with
messengers for nothing;
Who contains believers and disbelievers—Who is the
most majestic lover;
Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,
spiritualism, and of the æsthetic, or intellectual,
Who, having considered the body, finds all its organs
and parts good;
Who, out of the theory of the earth, and of his or her
body, understands by subtle analogies, the theory
of a city, a poem, and of the large politics
of These States;

Who believes not only in our globe, with its sun and
moon, but in other globes, with their suns and
moons;
Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not
for a day, but for all time, sees races, eras, dates,
generations,
The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable
together.