The Orbit Is Pre-empted By Summer Vay-cay This Week

No show. Much happiness. Lots of lake.

Walt Whitman: Song of Myself, Part 50

May 25, 2017By Parabola Editors

Part 50

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.
Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,

I sleep—I sleep long.
I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,

It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal

life—it is Happiness.

—Walt Whitman, from LEAVES OF GRASS (1855)

From Parabola Volume 42, No. 2, “Happiness,” Summer 2017. This issue is available to purchase here.