Whitman with Peter Doyle. Studio portrait (1865)
From Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality,
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions
and determinations of ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers!
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence-
forward;
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you perma-
nently within us;
We fathom you not—we love you.
