Loafe with Me

I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass....

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, (1900)