On philanthropy, science, and dreams: reflections on what is valuable in life:

To Rich Givers.

What you give me I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendez- 
 vous with my poems,
A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as I journey through the States,  
 —why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to  
 advertise for them?
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman,
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts  
 of the universe.

Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,
To formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the  
 modern,
Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,
(Recast, may-be discard them, end them—may-be their work is  
 done, who knows?)
By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty  
 past, the dead,
To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old  
 World brain,
Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so long,
Thou carefully prepared by it so long—haply thou but unfoldest  
 it, only maturest it,
It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain’d  
 in thee,
Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with  
 reference to thee;
Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing,
The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in thee.

Give me O God to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.

Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, accessed at whitmanarchive.org

For other poems on science, see here.