Whitman

Some great reads for book lovers, especially people who need to read constantly and have minds that vacuum: WritersNoOneReads is fun, as is the cute Bookshelfies for a new type of selfie. If you love fashion and bathing suits, be sure to check out the odd and funny bookcover inspired suits at Matchbook here.

Now, let's look at "Song of the Exposition" [from Book XIII] from the famous American Whitman [1819-1892], more here--this excerpt is a great example of how versatile Whitman is, it's important to try many different poems by some writers so that you see their whole oeuvre, their whole reach. This section here is an interesting look into the ancient world, into the mysteries of the past:

      3
  Responsive to our summons,
  Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination,
  Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
  She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,
  I scent the odor of her breath's delicious fragrance,
  I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
  Upon this very scene.

  The dame of dames! can I believe then,
  Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?
  Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old
      associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
  But that she's left them all—and here?

  Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
  I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
  The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
      expression,
  Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,
  Hidden and cover'd by to-day's, foundation of to-day's,
  Ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain,
  Silent the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
      baffling tombs,
  Ended for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors, ended
      the primitive call of the muses,
  Calliope's call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
  Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the
      holy Graal,
  Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
  The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,
  Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
  Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its
      waters reflected,
  Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
      Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation;
  Pass'd! pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world,
      now void, inanimate, phantom world,
  Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,
  Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
      courtly dames,
  Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on,
  Blazon'd with Shakspere's purple page,
  And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.