Bartender, make mine a Walt Whit

Had a lovely day of lounging in the park while my friends Jim and Malachy played wiffle ball.

We declared the afternoon was not unlike a Manet painting. 'Cept for we weren't wearing our Sunday whites and I forgot my parosol. And instead of tea we had beer. And instead of a steam train (is that the right time period??) there was...the el. Anyways, by god there was poetry. I read aloud inspirational excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" from Leaves of Grass. The cajones on this guy!

I'd like to share some passages that are particularly yawp-inducing (re: Dead Poet's Society).

Seriously though, I urge you to imbibe the Walt Whit, reader! Drink up the lines and let them dribble down your chin--this song is for you! Celebrate yourself! Life is fleeting--open up and sound your barbaric yawp to the world!!!

"I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

"I am of old and young, of the foolish as much the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man.
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine"

"Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with doctors
and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my bones."

"In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn
less,
And the good or bad I saw of myself I say of them."

"One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or in ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait."

NB:

Below is Philly Brewing Company's lovely ode to the old bard. Give me a slice of lemon and send me to summer, please!