Walt Whitman
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Leaves of Grass

A Walt Whitman Collection

Book II. Starting From Paumanok

Chapter VI

The soul,
Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer
     than water ebbs and flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the
     most spiritual poems,
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and
     of immortality.

I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any
     circumstances be subjected to another State,
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by
     night between all the States, and between any two of them,
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of
     weapons with menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
And a song make I of the One form`d out of all,
The fang`d and glittering One whose head is over all,
Resolute warlike One including and over all,
(However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

I will acknowledge contemporary lands,
I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously
     every city large and small,
And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is heroism
     upon land and sea,
And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

I will sing the song of companionship,
I will show what alone must finally compact these,
I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love,
     indicating it in me,
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were
     threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,
I will give them complete abandonment,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,
For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?