There was a child went forth by Walt Whitman. There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon, that object he became, and that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. The early lilacs became part of this child, and grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover in the song of the Phoebe bird, and the third month lambs and the Sal's pink faint litter, and the mayor's foal and the cow's calf, and the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire upon side. And the fish, suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid, and the water plants with their graceful flat heads all became part of him. The field sprouts of fourth month and fifth month became part of him, winter grain sprouts and those of the light yellow corn, and the eskinet roots of the garden, and the apple trees covered with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and woodberries and the commonest weeds by the road. And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen, and the school mistress that passed on her way to the school, and the friendly boys that passed and the choralsome boys, and the tidy and fresh cheek girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl. All the changes of city and country wherever he went. His own parents, he that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb and birthed him. They gave this child more of themselves than that. They gave him afterward every day. They became part of him. The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper table. The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by. The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust, the blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, the family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart, affection that will not be gainsaid, the sense of what is real, and the thought if after all it should prove unreal. The doubts of daytime and the doubts of night time, the curious weather and how, whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks. Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks, what are they? The streets themselves and the facades of houses and goods in the windows, vehicles, teens, the heavy-planked warves, the huge crossing at the fairies, the village on the highlands seen from afar at sunset, the river between. Shadows, oryola and mist, the light falling off roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off. The schooner nearby sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack towed a stern. The hurrying tumbling waves quick-broken crests slapping, the strata of colored clouds, the long bar of maroon tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity at lies motionless in. The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, these became part of that child who went forth every day and who now goes and will always go forth every day.