Happy 200th Birthday Walt Whitman

One of the patron saints of RtBE would have turned 200 today if he was some sort of magical wizard or a vampire. Walt Whitman inspired the name of the site and it's spirit. We celebrate him every Opening Day but today is a special occasion. 

The poetry of Whitman has thrived over the years and he continues to be taught, loved and read 200 years after his birth.

The Good Gray Poet will live on, so let's celebrate with James Earl Jones (Darth Vader himself) reading Whitman, some video celebrating the man and if you are feeling REALLY ambitious (it is 19 hours) there is the full audio book of his masterpiece Leaves of Grass below:

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.



Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?