A Few Good Words

There is a passage in the famous preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass that I read every now and then, usually at the beginning of each new year. While I realize that we're already well into 2010, coming across these words the other day prompted me to post them.

Over the years this passage has become both creed and mantra for me, so these are good words to share. Across time, Whitman is calling upon each and every one of us, not just poets, to rise up to the challenge of being the very best we can be—compassionate, loving, wise and open-minded.

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .