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Home: Poetry: Walt Whitman: We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd
| WE TWO, HOW LONG WE WERE FOOL'D |
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a poem by Walt Whitman
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- We two, how long we were fool'd,
- Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
- We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
- We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
- We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
- We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
- We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,
- We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
- We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
- We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
- We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
- We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
- We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
- We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
- We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other,
- We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
- We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
- We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
- We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
| "We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd" is reprinted from Leaves of Grass. Walt Whitman. Brooklyn: Fowler & Wells, 1856. |
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