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Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

by Walt Whitman (1819–92)

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16

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,

The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself.
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,

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Poets Book of Days

May 31

Walt Whitman born, 1819

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To whom is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Dejection: an Ode" addressed?

Answer

Sara Huchinson, William Wordsworth's sister-in-law. Coleridgewas hopelessly in love with her for some ten years. "Dejection: an Ode" was originally a letter in verse to her.

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Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

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