This Is What You Shall Do

This Is What You Shall Do

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Devote your income and labors to others,

Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

Have patience and indulgence toward the people,

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

Or to any man or number of men,

Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

And with the young and with the mothers of families,

Read these leaves in the open air,

Every season of every year of your life,

Reexamine all you have been told,

At school at church or in any book,

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

And your very flesh shall be a great poem,

And have the richest fluency not only in its words,

But in the silent lines of its lips and face,

And between the lashes of your eyes,

And in every motion and joint of your body.

 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

From the Preface to Leaves of Grass