Almost impossible to imagine how this pansexual poem made its way into the hearths and hearts of American critics and readers. The 1855 original version is more impressionistic than later versions. All feature Whitman's aeronautical lists of places and people from all over America. The poem's first word is "I." Its last is "you." The quest is to bridge that gap. A quintessential transcendental poem of the sort that Emerson imagined and was lucky enough to witness if not write. Whitman and Dickinson are the two first great American poets, both part of the American Renaissance of the mid1800s.