This Compost

by Walt Whitman

Now I am terrified at the earth!
It is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis,
with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks,
its prodigal,
annual,
sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men
and accepts such leavings from them at last.


As featured on
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Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most beautiful words of all.
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman

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