Some time ago a Philadelphia anatomist announced to the world
that the brain of Walt Whitman, through the carelessness of a
hospital employee, had been lost to science. The jar that held
the poet’s brain fell to the floor and was broken, so that not
even the fragments of the organ were saved. Well, let the poet’s
brain be shattered, if you will; the poet himself can not be
touched. The flaming star-wheels can not crush him, the maddened
oceans can not engulf him, the black caves of night can not hide
him, the scorching flames of hell can not destroy him. Man is a
spark of divinity the image of deity, an “emotion of God flashed
into time.”--F. F. SHANNON.
(1955)