“Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, / Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, / Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.”

Whitman asks for almost nothing: no poem, no music, no ritual, only the sound of one particular voice at close range. It is the least decorative love poem in American literature and one of the most frequently quoted on this kind of day.