About
this is what you shall do: love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants... have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off you hat to nothing known or unknownor 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, reexamine everything you have been told at school or at church or in every book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poemand have the riches fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of it's lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
--walt whitman
