This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
300
Leaves of Grass

My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.


I WAS LOOKING A LONG WHILE.


I was looking a long while for Intentions,
For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants—and now I have found it,
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject,)
It is no more in the legends than in all else,
It is in the present—it is this earth to-day,
It is in Democracy—(the purport and aim of all the past,)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—the average man of to-day,
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the modern—all for the average man of to-day.


THOUGHT.


Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like;
(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls,
So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,
And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,
And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots,
And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities,
And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more,
And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)