A correspondent on the Al Stewart mailing list asked for suggestions for a poem to use as part of his son’s Eagle Scout ceremony. I suggested my favourite lines from Walt Whitman:
This day before dawn I ascended a hill,
and look’d at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my Spirit,
When we become the enfolders of those orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge
of everything in them,
shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my Spirit said:
No, we but level that lift,
to pass and continue beyond.
[Leaves of Grass, 1871-72 edition, page 322]