May 31, which is still Today on the American west coast, is Walt Whitman’s birthday. Born in 1819, he would be almost 200 years old today if science would hurry up and cure aging. Right now we only have poetry.

Along with Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville, Whitman invented American poetry. In the man’s honor—as thanks for what he wrote—here is a short poem from the 1860s that is usually named by its first line. You will almost certainly like it if you enjoy the English language and are human. The text below is from Michael Moon’s superb Norton Critical edition of Whitman’s work.

Come for the erotic politics, stay for the ecological sensibility, that’s the Whitman way here.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the 
         branches; 

Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous 
         leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think 
         of myself; 

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves
         standing alone there without its friend its 
         lover near, for I knew I could not, 

And I broke off a twig with a certain number of 
         leaves upon it, and twined around it a little 
         moss,

And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in 
         my room, 

It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear 
         friends,

(For I believe lately I think of little else than of 
         them,)

Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me 
         think of manly love; 

For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there 
         in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,

Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a 
         lover near,

I know very well I could not.