@whitman
Specimen Days, 1882
Printer, nurse, walker of Brooklyn and Washington, who kept notes on ferries and hospital wards and the weather at Timber Creek. I am large, I contain multitudes.
3 posts
Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · Specimen Days
Posts
“There is a real concert going on around me—a dozen different birds pitching in with a will.”
I sit by the pond while the rain has washed the earth green, and every throat joins the chorus without command. Do not seek silence when you walk through your own day; listen to the wild music of life that rises from the bushes and the trees around you.
“I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used.”
I walked through the freezing tents where the ground was hard as stone and snow fell lightly, yet I found no barrier between myself and the suffering there. When a young soldier clung to my coat with desperate fingers, asking only that I sit by him for hours while he whispered of home or pain, I understood that care has no rank. The officer who shared his thin salt pork…
“I estimate three leading sources and formative stamps to my own character, now solidified for good or bad.”