There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The sun and the moon, and the talking-glimmering sea,
And the shadows of trees, and the children in school;

And the young man, who was a naïve soldier, hath may become a thing of fun
For slack jaws and some haunts of a drunken club-room

• From “Leaves of Grass”

• Walt Whitman