Whitmanesque

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

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The following is not quite an essay, but its all I have on hand. It is an assignment from my English III H. class-we were to write poems in the style of Whitman. It illustrates his use of cataloging, metaphors, natural inspiration, and the gleaning of a divine truth.

The First Sacred Thing It is sunset on the first eve of spring. The mellow glowing orb descends in slow and stately majesty; green earth swims in melon phosphorescence.

Some songbird sings his first celebratory song, pirched in the still-bear arms of winter oaks.

The slightly moist earth fills my nostrils with its warm, musky scent. A lone tulip tree stands against a background of green.

I see my self in the temple like dome of the cerulean sky. My body is the pillar of a Corinthian oak; my breath is the gentle breeze. My spirit is everywhere. I am merging, melding, losing identity within the essential oneness of the world.

My earthly body nearly cries upon seeing the beauty of pastel melon wrapped around the slender waist of day. Certainly I am lacking in proper respiration. Nonassumingly, without pretense and without clause, as beautiful souls are apt to do, the fading light so steals my adoration.

I am merging, melding, losing my identity within the oneness of the world. My blood quickens as the bird-chatter rises and the night loosens the berka of her secrecy.

I am losing myself in the utter ecstasy of this nature-dance.

I am but a servant to the great cosmic gods, to the eternally spinning cycle of the years. Be I as oak or ash or even slight willow, m y will and my power is in upholding this, in being this, the first sacred thing.

I am losing myself in the realization of innate godliness! The shrubs are my brothers and the grass is my father. Born am I of the union of matter and Quintessence. Oh, the inner Divine so does sing. Born am I of this first sacred thing.

As are you born.

Join with me, dance with me, sisters and brothers, children of the ultimate divinity within. Become as fluid pillars-not of law but of love, for in naught but love may this trueness be known.

As I glance from tree to tree, from earth to sky, I physically feel the energies and the thoughts of these beings. They are sentient beings. They are of mea s I am of them. They too are born of the first sacred thing.

A silver March crescent moon has slipped up beside me in the periwinkle sky. "Behold, Behold!" she says. "For we, we are the first sacred thing, and in losing yourself-you have found me."