FAITH POEM
—Walt Whitman
I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is
pre-occupied of his own soul;
I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given
time, there waits for me more which I do not
know;
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside
the hands and face I am cognizant of, are
now looking faces I am not cognizant of—
calm and actual faces;
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the
world is latent in any iota of the world;
I do not doubt there are realizations I have
no idea of, waiting for me through time
and through the universes—also upon this
earth;
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni-
verses are limitless—in vain I try to think
how limitless;
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of
orbs, play their swift sports through the air
on purpose—and that I shall one day be
eligible to do as much as they, and more than
they;
I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities,
insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds,
rejected refuse, than I have supposed;
I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have
supposed—and more in all men and women
—and more in my poems than I have
supposed;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and
on, millions of years;
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and
exteriors have their exteriors—and that the
eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hear-
ing another hearing, and the voice another
voice;
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths
of young men are provided for—and that the
deaths of young women, and the deaths of
little children, are provided for;
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter
what the horrors of them—no matter whose
wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone
down—are provided for, to the minutest
point;
I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malig-
nance, are provided for;
I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the
remainder of the earth, politics, freedom,
degradations, are carefully provided for;
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen,
anywhere, at any time, is provided for, in
the inherences of things.
________________________
—Medusa
