What do you suppose creation is? 
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and
    own no superior? 
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but
    that man or woman is as good as God? 
And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? 
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean? 
And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?

} To a Common Prostitute

Be composed—­be at ease with me—­I am Walt Whitman, liberal and
    lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
    rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you
    make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.

} I Was Looking a Long While

I was looking a long while for Intentions,
For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these
    chants—­and now I have found it,
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
    accept nor reject,)
It is no more in the legends than in all else,
It is in the present—­it is this earth to-day,
It is in Democracy—­(the purport and aim of all the past,)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—­the average man of to-day,
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,
    politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the modern—­all for the average man of to-day.

} Thought

Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,
    scholarships, and the like;
(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them,
    except as it results to their bodies and souls,
So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,
And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,
And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the
    rotten excrement of maggots,
And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true
    realities of life, and go toward false realities,
And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them,
    but nothing more,
And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)

} Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle? 
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,