Boone: A Biography

by Robert Morgan

In “Song of the Open Road,” published in the 1856 second edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman evokes an image of freedom and wandering as a way of life as thrilling as Thoreau’s metaphor of walking. The open road is the way of beauty and freedom, a life of discovery and wonder, a path to the shining future, the Edenic west of brotherhood. From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great draughts of space. The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.