Happy 200th Birthday, WW!

Immortal, indeed!

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every
      one is immortal,
I know it is wonderful—but my eye-sight is equally
      wonderful, and how I was conceived in my moth-
      er's womb is equally wonderful;
And how I was not palpable once, but am now—and
      was born on the last day of Fifth Month, in the
      Year 43 of America,
And passed from a babe, in the creeping trance of
      three summers and three winters, to articulate
      and walk—All this is equally wonderful.
And that I grew six feet high, and that I have become
      a man thirty-six years old in the Year 79 of
      America—and that I am here anyhow—are all
      equally wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we af-
      fect each other without ever seeing each other,
      and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit
      as wonderful.

The Walt Whitman Archive