Sympathy Quotes

O male and female!

O the presence of women!
(I swear there is nothing more exquisite to me
than the mere presence of women;)

O for the girl, my mate!

O for the happiness with my mate!

O for the young man as I pass!

O I am sick after the friendship of him who,
I fear, is indifferent to me.

O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes!

O I cannot tell how welcome they are to me.

(by Walt Whitman)

O the mother’s joys!
The watching, the endurance, the precious love,
the anguish, the patiently yielded life.

O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation;
The joy of soothing and pacifying
the joy of concord and harmony.

O to go back to the place where I was born!
To hear the birds sing once more!
To ramble about the house and barn,
and over the fields, once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.

(by Walt Whitman)

O the fireman’s joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells—shouts!—I pass the crowd—I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.

O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter,
towering in the arena, in perfect condition,
conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.

O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy
which only the human Soul is capable of generating
and emitting in steady and limitless floods.

(by Walt Whitman)

O the engineer’s joys!
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek—the steam-whistle—the laughing
locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the forenoon.

O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the cool gurgling by the
ears
and hair.

(by Walt Whitman)

O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time;

I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

(by Walt Whitman)

When Your Pants Begin to Go by Henry Lawson

When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn’t white,
And you cannot sleep for thinking how you’ll reach to-morrow night,
You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care,
And as yet be unacquainted with the Demon of Despair;
For I rather think that nothing heaps the trouble on your mind
Like the knowledge that your trousers badly need a patch behind.

I have noticed when misfortune strikes the hero of the play,
That his clothes are worn and tattered in a most unlikely way;
And the gods applaud and cheer him while he whines and loafs around,
And they never seem to notice that his pants are mostly sound;
But, of course, he cannot help it, for our mirth would mock his care,
If the ceiling of his trousers showed the patches of repair.

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