Saturday, June 9, 2012

Graduates and poets to come

It's grad season and I seem to be caught up in more of the celebrations than usual this year. It's always a bit of a challenge to wish a young person a lifetime of challenges, joys and triumphs, but then I came across this:

Poets to Come by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.



I think that works.