ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



"Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid 



and liquid, 

 You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky. 

 For none more than you are the present and the past, 

 For none more than you is immortality." 



My studies of nature and of the universe help me 

 to understand Whitman much more than does my 

 reading of literature itself. 



Whitman is rapt and thrilled when he looks up 

 to the midnight sky. His very style is orbicular and 

 concentric. The scientific aspects of astronomy do 

 not engage him for a moment, any more than they 

 did the old Hebrew prophets; his science becomes 

 human emotion. He is the human soul matching 

 itself against the starry hosts, coping with them and 

 absorbing them : 



" This day before dawn I ascended the hill and look'd at the 



crowded heaven, 

 And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, 



and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall 



we be filled and satisfied then f 

 And my spirit said, No, we but level that lift to pass and continue 



beyond." 



Is there not more than astronomy in these pas- 

 sages? 



" I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, 

 And all I can see multiplied as high as I can cypher edges but the 

 rim of the farther system. 



Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 

 Outward and outward and forever outward. 



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