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Unique among the American verse of his time, “Song of Myself”—as well as the rest of his poetry—reflected an intense individualism coupled with a mystical celebration of America and the common man. Concluding his 1855 prose preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman forecasted his prominence in American literature: “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” Although Whitman was first recognized as an important literary figure in England and France, by the 20th century, he had surely achieved that self-professed goal. Whitman’s use of unconventional
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Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself.
They come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And cease the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Who need be afraid of the merge?
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,
I resist anything better than my own diversity, And breathe the air and leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing, If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me.
All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, What is less or more than a touch? Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, Only what nobody denies is so.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass; I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then . . . . I contradict myself; I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.
