Class 8 Student Feature

Class 8 students worked through an assignment of studying the poem below. As students studied the themes, they created a painting every week from those inspirations.

Song of the Open Road
BY WALT WHITMAN

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth l ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth i whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go, I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, lam fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,

The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas'd, the illiterate person, are not denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,

The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town, They pass, lalso pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,

None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

You air that serves me with breath to speak!

You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!

You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!

You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!

I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

Artwork by Class 8 Student - Rose Lee Silverman

Public Domain Full Poem