"I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in there place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not
original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing,
If they do not enclose everything they are nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
This is the breath of laws and songs and behaviour,
This is the tasteless water of souls....this is the true sustenance,
It is for the illiterate....it is for the judges of the supreme court....
it is for the federal capitol and the state capitols,
It is for the admirable communes of literary men and composers and
singers and lecturers and engineers and savants,
It is for the endless races of working people and farmers and seamen."
from Leaves of Grass {Song of Myself} by Walt Whitman in 1855.Image: Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, as herdsman and flautist pictured here with His beloved, Radha, on the banks of the river Yamuna.
from the book The Hindu Pantheon - An Introduction, Illustrated with 19th century Indian Miniatures from the St. Petersburg Collection, E. Tyomkin and M. Voryobyova-Desyatovska, Garnet Publishing, UK, 1994.
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