Walt Whitman: 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 mothers of families,

Read these leaves in the open air,

every season of every year of your life,

Reexamine 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...

Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 - March 26, 1892) was a poet, essayist and journalist, known for the richness and beauty of his free verse style. With the publication of his Leaves of Grass in 1855 this self-styled "common man" became the national poet of a young and optimistic country. His writings captured the nation's spirit as it moved through the 19th century, grappling with westward expansion, immigration, slavery and the Civil War.