A Muse for Another Artist

Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and sage within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.

By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born — conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed it waiting.

From Song of the Universal published in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1819–1892).