
The great unrest of which we are part
My thoughts went floating
on vast and mystic currents
as I sat today in solitude
in the half-shade by the creek
returning mainly
to two principal centres
One of my cherished themes
for a never-finished poem
has been the two impetuses
of man
and the universe
—in the latter
creation’s incessant unrest
exfoliation or
what Darwin termed evolution
: indeed, what is Nature
but change in all its visible
and still more
its invisible processes
and what is humanity
in its faith its love
its heroism its poetry
even in its morals
but emotion ?
Walt Whitman
Adapted from Specimen Days (1882) by John Lyons. Happy Thanksgiving in the bicentennial of the great American poet’s birth on 31 May 1819!