Song of Myself: The First and Final Editions of the Great American Poem (Illustrated)

by Walt Whitman

I resist anything better than my own diversity, And breathe the air and leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall . . . battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God's name,