 The main library presents Whitman himself the modern man I sing with Richard Cuss Leaves of grass I celebrate myself And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me is good belongs to you. I Loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease Observing a spear of summer grass Whitman himself or at least the spirit of Whitman Resurrected in the library talking to friends you know while roaming the halls of the New York Historical Society I found a first edition of Leaves of Grass published by myself when I was 36 years old Placed on sale July 4th 1855 And it was only 95 pages long But they caused Emerson to rub his eyes and A hundred years later in your critic Malcolm Cowley Referred to it as the buried masterpiece of American writing and now today Unburied after a hundred years Like grass keeps growing the goosebumps I felt as I opened my original first edition With its dark green covers with no author's name on the cover Just the title Leaves of grass and gold rustic letters Which had many roots growing down and many many leaves sprouting up and inside This picture of a working man again No name Is he the man of the book? He faces the title page Leaves of grass Brooklyn, New York 1855 still no author no publisher Is it this young man speaking to us? 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 sons left You shall no longer take things at second or third hand No look through the eyes of the dead no feed on the specters in books You shall not look through my eyes either nor take things from me You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself Turning the title page in very small print is the copyright entered according to act of Congress in the year 1855 by Walter Whitman And I Walter I was type setter and layout man Self-publishing without a desktop computer. I begin with no contents page But with a prose preface. It is followed by 12 poems pages 14 through 95 And there are no titles for each poem just my songs flowing from the final thought of that preface The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it Clear and sweet is my soul and Clear and sweet is all that is not my soul lack one lacks both a 140 years ago a critic of the book wrote First be yourself what you would show in the poem. Oh I was the critic As a newspaper editor, I loved writing my own reviews or I only wrote three a Majority of the favorable notices You see I Was two men really I? Wanted to be in real life the role I was creating in the book as Early as 1848 I had written in my notebooks. I cannot understand the mystery But I am always conscious of myself as too as my soul and I And I reckon it is the same with all men and women Now the man I created in the book Speaks body to soul. I believe in you my soul The other I am must not abase itself to you and you must not be a base to the other Loaf 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 valed voice a Child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he I Guess it must be the flag of my disposition out of hopeful green stuff woven Or I guess the grass is itself a child the produced babe of the vegetation And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves Tenderly will I use you curling grass? It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men It may be if I had known them I would have loved them Maybe you are from old people and from women and from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps and here You are the mother's Oh This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers Darker than the colorless beards of old men Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths Though I perceive after all so many uttering tongues and I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women and the hints about old men and women Mothers and the offspring taken soon out of their laps What do you think has become of the young and old men? What do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well Somewhere the smallest sprout shows there is really no death And if there ever 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 anyone supposed and luckier Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die and I know it I Pass death with the dying and birth with the new washed babe And I'm not contained between my hat and my boots And Peru's manifold objects no two alike and everyone good The earth good and the stars good and their adjuncts all good I am not an earth nor an adjunct of the nurse I am the mate and companion of people all just as immortal and fathomless as myself They do not know how immortal but I know You see I was my own press agent as well as critic And I circulated my book to other writers Conquered Massachusetts 21st July 1855 dear sir, I Am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of leaves of grass I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I Have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well as they must be I Greet you at the beginning of a great career Which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere For such a start I Rubbed my eyes a little to see if this Sunbeam were no illusion R. W. Emerson. Oh Well, not too many people agreed with Ralph Waldo But for some transcendentalists like Thoreau and all caught oh The poet John Greenleaf wittier after having read my first edition Throw it in his fireplace Oh But What was my Long foreground somewhere. I was born May 31st 1819 And named Walter Whitman, Jr. I was the second of nine children in the town of West Hills Huntington Long Island Dutch and English stock Quakers My father was a farmer and a housebuilder and a friend of Tom Payne. Oh My mother I wrote Well begotten and raised by a perfect mother I Went to public school until the age of 12 when I was apprentice to the printing trade. Oh, we were a a close family But but nevertheless at 14 I was on my own and worked as a printer in New York City until the great fire of 1835 burned me out of the job 1836 at the age of 17 I was a school teacher at East Norwich Long Island and later I taught at M. Steaden Babylon Long Swamp in Smithtown Oh, and the days on the beaches Declaming Homer and Shakespeare So ended my formal education At 22 I returned to New York and in 1841 as a type setter for the new world But then I became a newspaper man a writer and an editor To the statesman the Democrat the Long Island star and many many many many others as I pounded the blabber the pavement of Manhattan absorbing its people and places its plays and especially the Italian opera And oh Yes There were the Broadway omnibuses with their drivers. Oh How well I remember them Sitting up on top alongside these men with their teams of horses Riding the whole length of Broadway listening to some yawn Or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or Richard Oh, you could roar as loudly as you chose in the heavy dense Uninterrupted street base of Broadway Oh, yes, yes, I know all those drivers then Broadway Jack Dressmaker Borky Bill old elephant and his brother young elephant There were hundreds hundreds They had immense qualities largely animal eating drinking women You know, I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but The influence of those Broadway omnibuses and the drivers undoubtedly entered into the gestation of leaves of grass Also at this time I had published a rather routine temperance novel Franklin Evans or the inebriate Finally in 1846 I became editor of the Brooklyn Eagle at age 27 Walter Whitman Journalist ah Oh, it was during those years. I got rather involved with politics Yes, yes, yes, you too Walter the journalist You see, I was invited by the bosses at Tammany to speak before 10,000 people in New York City After the Mexican War The nation was was expanding and I was politically a free soil We believed slavery should not extend to any new territory And this man I was creating knew where he stood on the fugitive slave law The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside. I Heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood pile Who the swung half door of the kitchen? I saw him limpy and weak and went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him and brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet and Gave him a room that entered from my own and gave him some coarse clean clothes and Remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness and remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and past north. I Had him sit next to me at table My firelock leaned in the corner But times change we all know that And as the journalist Walter Whitman my free soil editorial policy No longer suited the publishers of the Brooklyn Eagle after two years. I was fired now Well, we know that game all too well today Walter the journalist there are those who would suppress us Keep us hidden Imagine me keeping my thoughts to myself But in 1848 I was still the journalist writing in the past tense. I had yet to become the poet writing in the present tense uninhibited by society's curtains 28 young men bathed by the shore 28 young men and all so friendly 28 years of womanly life and all so lonesome She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank. She hides handsome and richly dressed after blinds of the window Which of the young men does she like the best? The homeliest of them is beautiful to her Oh, where are you off to lady for I see you you splash in the water there yet stay stuck still in your room Dancing and laughing along the beach came the 29th beaver The rest did not see her but she saw them and loved them The beards of the young men glistened with wet it ran from their long hair little streams passed all over their bodies It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs The young men float on their backs their white bellies swell to the sun They do not ask who sees as fast to them They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch They do not think whom they south with spray So age 29 And I'm out of a job again a failure 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 This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is This is the common heir that bathes the globe This is the trail of a thousand clear cornetts and scream of the act of fluked and strike of triangle I play not a march for victors only I play great marches for conquered and slain persons Have you heard it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are one But job hunting in New York City, I managed an out-of-town engagement With a $200 advance So with my 14 year old younger brother Jeff in tow We left my Manahatta and journeyed by train stagecoach steamboat to edit the New Orleans Crescent This is the meal pleasantly set This is the meat and drink for natural hunger It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous I make appointments with all I will not have a single person slighted or left away The kept woman and sponger and thief are hereby invited. The heavy lip slave is invited. The venereal e is invited There shall be no difference between them and the rest Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have For the April rain has and the mica on the side of a rock has Do you take it I would astonish Does the daylight astonish For the early red start twittering through the woods Do I astonish more than they This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody But I will tell you New Orleans new Orleans Something happened there. Oh I kept my biographers strangely in the dark Some say a woman I wrote to one of my biographers Though unmarried I have had six children Uh one living grandson fine boy well Circumstances have separated me from intimate relations I exist as I am That is enough If no other in the world be aware I sit content And if each and all be aware I sit content I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul I am the poet of the woman the same as the man And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men I am he that walks with the tender and growing night Well after three months on the job and with the very very homesick younger brother jeff We returned from New Orleans On the water spine of America Yes, we plotted back northward up the Mississippi And around to and by way of the Great Lakes to Niagara Falls and lower Canada and finally returning to central new york And down the mighty Hudson In my preface I I wrote the United States themselves Are essentially the greatest poem Was it new allens Was it the journey What was turning the Newspaper man into the poet Walt Whitman and american one of the roughs the cosmos Disorderly fleshy and sensual Eating drinking and breeding No sentimentalist no standard above men and women or apart from them no more modest than immodest By god, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms Through me many long dumb voices Through me forbidden voices voices of sexes and lusts Voices veiled and I remove the veil I do not press my finger across my mouth I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart Copulation is no more ranked to me than death is I believe in the flesh and the appetites Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles And each part and tag of me is a miracle Divine am I inside and out and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from The scent of these armpits is aroma finer than prayer This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds In brooklyn again I built a new home for my parents and my family at 106 myrtle avenue Huh, but I I use the storefront office on the ground floor for a free soil newspaper The free man As editorial policy in the first issue I wrote We shall oppose under all circumstances the addition to the union in the future of a single inch of slave land Whether in the form of state or territory Well, I campaigned for the free soil ticket of 1848 Oh, but but but all we managed was to split the democratic party And gave the election to the wigs Zachary Taylor Now we radical free soilers Drifted My paper the free man went under Now the democrat press was closed to me I tried getting by submitting pieces to my friends William Cullen Bryant of the new york post Horace Greeley of the herald tribune Then on march 7th 1850 Fearing the south would secede from the union The great daniel webster Ha made his speech in support of clay's compromise resolution regarding slavery and newly formed states And by september congress accepted it Free soil was compromised As the journalist walter whitman I wrote quote The representatives of the people must never forget that they are only Representatives and that their duty is to act in the interest of all not to tyrannize The duty of the citizen on the other hand Is not to obey But to make his will respected Oh, yes, yes, I renounced politics Ha ha ha I don't on myself There is that lot of me and all so luscious each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach it provokes me forever. It says sarcastically waltz You understand enough. Why don't you let it out then? I think I will do nothing for a long time. But listen, I merely stir Press feel with my fingers And i'm happy to touch my person to someone else's Is about as much as I can stand Now I became the poet walt whitman By 1851 I stood for art and artists Against the materialism of the american people and the worship of the dollar The example I now proposed was socrates and greater than socrates christ I now was writing in the leaves of my notebooks Whoever degrades another degrades me And whatever is done nor said returns at last to me I had left the newspapers of manhattan Went back to house building with my father and my brothers But I wasn't the best of workers. I was writing my book I was a dreamer And a scribbler I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars And the pismire is equally perfect than a grain of sand and the egg of a wren And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery And a mouse is miracle enough to stag a sextillions of infidels I think I could turn and live a while with the animals. They are so placid and self-contained They do not sweat and whine about their condition They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to god Not one is dissatisfied not one is demented with the mania of owning things Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago Not one is respectable or or industrious over the whole earth In my preface as the poet I express my personal credo Making the man in the poem The man in the world This is what you shall do Love the earth and sun and the animals despise riches Give alms to everyone that asks Stand up for the stupid and the crazy to vote your labor and income to others Hate tyrants Argue not concerning god Have patience and indulgence toward the people and read these liens In the open air every season of every year of your life Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book Dismiss whatever insults your own soul And your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words But in every motion and joint of your body Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity What I give I give out of myself Oh despairer Here is my neck By god you shall not go down hang your whole weight upon me I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs And for the strong upright men I bring yet more needed help I know perfectly well my own egotism and know my omnivorous words and cannot say any less My words are words of a questioning and to indicate reality Early on before my leaves I had read the writings of my master Emerson referring to America as I quote an asylum of all nations The energy of irish-german swedes poles and cossacks all the european tribes Of the african and of the pollinations Will construct a new race Unquote and now I knew I was simmering simmering simmering Emerson brought me to a boil It is time to explain myself Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister I am sorry for you they are not murderous or jealous upon me All has been gentle with me I keep no account with lamentation. What have I to do with lamentation? I am an acme of things accomplished and I an enclosure of things to be I tramp a perpetual journey show to your duds and I will mine and let us hasten forth Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heavens And I said to my spirit When we become the infolder of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them Shall we be filled and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond You are also asking me questions and I hear you I answer that I cannot answer You must find out for yourself My words itch at your ears till you understand them I have said that the soul is not more than the body and I have said that the body is not more than the soul And nothing not god is greater to one than one self is And I call to mankind be not curious about god For I who am curious about each am not curious about god No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about god and about death I hear and behold god in every object yet. I understand god not in the least Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself Why should I wish to see god better than this day? I see something of god each hour of the 24 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 everyone is signed by god's name And I leave them where they are for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever And as to you death And you bitter hug of mortality It is idle to try to alarm me And as to you life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths No doubt I have died myself Ten thousand times before and do you see my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death it is form and union and plan It is eternal life It is happiness Or do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself I have large I contain multitudes I found my barbaric yelp over the roofs of the world I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love If you want me again look for me under your boots so You will hardly know who I am or what I mean But I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood Failing to fetch me me at first keep encouraged Missing me one place search another I stopped somewhere waiting for you For the second edition I wrote 20 new poems Now 32 poems and 340 pages oh the grass keeps growing And in the copyright Walt has officially replaced Walter But still the same carpet of photo Yet conformity appeared It was a book like any other book A table of contents titles and numbers for the poems The untitled first poem I now called poem of Walt Whitman and American It would be years before I would call it song of myself And in this edition of 1856 was sundown poem Wherein I talked to you Who were yet to be born You know it As crossing brooklyn ferry Crowds of men and women are tired and the usual costumes are curious you are to me And the ferry boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious to me than you suppose And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence Are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is it avails not Distance avails not and place avails not I too lived Brooklyn of ample hills was mine. I too walked the streets of Manhattan island and bathed in the waters around it I too felt the curious Abrupt questioning stir within me I too had received identity by my body That I was I knew was of my body And what I should be I knew I should be of my body It is not upon you alone that the dark patches fall The dark threw its patches down upon me also Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil I am he who knew what it is to be evil I too knitted the old knot of contrarity Blabbed blushed resented lides stole grudged That guile angle lost hot wishes I dare not speak Was wayward vain greedy shallow sly Cowardly malignant The wolf the snake the hog not wanting in me The cheating look the frivolous word the adulterous wish not wanting Refusals hates postponements meanness laziness none of these wanting Closer yet I approach you What thought you have of me now I had as much of you I laid in my stores in advance I considered long and seriously of you before you were born Who was to know what should come home to me Who knows but I am enjoying this Who knows for all the distance But I am as good as looking at you now For all you cannot see me I also included an open letter to emerson in the appendix of this second edition I was feeling my oats I wrote him that sex must be brought out of concealment into the open In order to foster a sane healthy attitude toward this important phase of life Spontaneous me Nature no once for all avowed on purpose wherever our men like me are a lusty lurking masculine poems Love thoughts love juice love odor love yielding love climbers and the climbing sap Arms and hands of love lips of love phallic thumb of love breasts of love bellies pressed and glued Together with love earth of chaste love life that is only life after love The body of my love the body of the woman I love the body of the man the body of the earth Soft forenoon airs that blow from the southwest The hairy wild bee that murmurs and hankers up and down that grips the full-grown lady flower Curves upon her with amorous firm legs takes his will of her And holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent While birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaught till I saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through the wholesome relief repose content And this bunch pluck that random from myself it has done its work I talk sit carelessly to fall where it may And in that letter to emison I said how much I enjoy making poems But other work have I said for myself to do to meet people in the states face to face and to confront them with an American rude tongue in poems and speeches well I say the word that has got to be said but now the journalist had much to say the election of 1856 was contested over the question of whether slavery should be extended into the recently formed territories of Nebraska and Kansas you see in 1856 there were three major presidential candidates then as now huh There's three Millard Fillmore the Whigs Americans the know-nothings James Buchanan the Democrats and John Charles Fremont for the new Republican Party It was in the Republican Party that we drifting radical free-soilers hoped to find our political place I wrote a paper it's purpose to preserve the union by a reform of the political system I called for a working class democracy Well the 18th presidency at present the personnel of the government of these 30 millions and executives and elsewhere is drawn from limbo tongueed lawyers very fluent but empty feeble old men professional politicians dandy's dispectics and so forth and rarely drawn from the solid body of the people every trustee of the people is a traitor looking only to his own gain and to boost up his party the births the presidency included are bought so electioneered for prostituted and filled with prostitutes the president eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals and likes it and tries to force it on the states as to what is called the fugitive slave law insolently put over the people by their congress and president it contravenes the whole of the organic compacts and is at all times to be defied in all parts of these states south or north by speech by pen and if need be by the bullet and the sword you young men american mechanics farmers boatmen manufacturers and all work people of the south the same as the north you are either to abolish slavery or it will abolish you this matter of deep personal conviction was never published bucannon the democrat was elected in 1856 i i i turned my life back to my art my poems walter walter the journalist you sure had trouble keeping a job did your poetry your thoughts your behavior getting away survivor i was summoned to boston where for the first time an edition of leaves of grass was to be published not by myself by the established firm of fair and eldridge boston the hub of literary america now this photo now appeared opposite the title page well this was to be an extremely organized work a lifetimes work at age 40 456 poems and this blue covered edition of 1860 has chapter headings in bold face on the contents page it has an architectural sense to it but it was still personal i used a copy of this blue book as a workbook for years editing poems always making changes always rewriting always accepting change as a way of life here are the lines printed on the page american mouth songs those of mechanics crossed out with handwritten rewrites declaiming i hear america singing the varied carols i hear each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong oh and one of your favorite poems is first introduced in this 1860 blue book edition as a word out of the sea it opens out of the rock's cradle out of the mockingbird's throat the musical shuttle out of the boy's mother's womb from the nipples of her breasts out of the ninth month midnight yes yes the grass keeps growing you know the poem as out of the cradle endlessly rocking out of the mockingbird's throat the musical shuttle out of the ninth month midnight oh this this penciled blue book was the book that was to prove trouble in years to come when after six months as a clerk in the office for indian affairs of the department of the interior my boss secretary james holland discovered this book on my desk and reading it fired me another job lost through free expression well so much for fame i was hired in ignorance of my writing and fired after reading the book yes i as the poet walt whitman purposely was outspoken telling it like it is when i came to boston prior to the publication i met with emerson the man who was my champion emerson who also had told me there are parts of the book when i hold my nose as i read how emerson now strongly suggested that the sexual section of the book entitled on fonds the adam which i later changed the children of adam this should not be published i recalled my reaction to emerson from specimen days more precious than gold to me that dissertation it afforded me ever after this strange and paradoxical lesson each point of emerson's statement was unanswerable no judges charge ever more complete or convincing i could never hear the points better put then i felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all and pursue my own way what of you to say to such things said emerson pausing in conclusion only that while i can't answer them at all i feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory and exemplify it that was my candid response whereupon we went and had a good dinner referring to these poems under the heading of children of adam and calamus thorough said it is as if the beast spoke and you understand even in those days sex was vital to life i wanted it to be a vital part of my verse in children of adam i wrote of amativeness the love of man and woman of procreation placed in this section was a poem from the earlier 1856 edition a woman waits for me she contains all nothing is lacking yet all were lacking if sex were lacking or if the moisture of the right man was lacking without shame the man i like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex without shame the woman i like knows and avows us now i will dismiss myself from impassive women i will go stay with her who waits for me and with those women that are warm blooded and sufficient for me i see that they understand me and do not deny me i see that they are worthy of me i will be the robust husband of those women and i carried the sexual theme further in the section entitled calamus adhesiveness the love the comradeship of man for man i had discovered this reality in life i put it in my leaves whoever you are holding me now in hand without one thing all will be useless i give you fair warning before you attempt me further i am not what you supposed but far different who is he that would be my follower who would sign himself for candidate for my affections the way is suspicious the result uncertain perhaps destructive therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further let go your hand from my shoulders put me down and depart on your way or else by stealth in some wood for trial or back of a rock in the open air for in any roofed room of a house i emerge not nor in company and in libraries i lie as one dumb a gawk or unborn or dead but just possibly with you on a high hill first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares here to put your lips upon mine i permit you with the comrades long dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss for i am the new husband and i am the comrade it had been suggested that i lost my job at the brooklyn times as sexual problems found their way into my editorials yes i had written calling for the legalization of prostitution it is needed and yes i was in love with a man whose name no one will ever know but i confess to you in my verse i am indifferent to my own songs i will go with him i love it is enough that we are together we never separate again but we did love is not always returned he did depart the tone of my verse my life was changed again oh in 1855 i was the youthful egotist in 56 i enjoyed the sexual battle against puritanism but now in the 1860 edition at age 40 the mood was one of negation depression and personal tragedy yes now the man was aging and the poet wasn't so sure of the world of himself a hand mirror hold it up sternly see this it sends back who is it is it you outside fair costume within ashes and filth no more a flashing eye no more a sonorous voice or springy step now some slaves i voice hand step a drunken's breath unwholesome meter's flesh venereal ease flesh lungs rotting away piecemeal stomach sour and cankerous joints romantic bowels clogged with abomination blood circulating dark and poisonous streams words babble hearing and touch callous no brain no heart left no magnetism of sex such from one look in this looking glass there you go hence such a result so soon and from such a beginning body and soul waltz witman lack one lacks both i needed all my strength my will to stand up to the media of 1860 emerson had warned me to cut sex out but the dirtiest book is an expurgated book under the headline smut in them the springfield massachusetts republican wrote in the issue of june 16 1860 oh and i quote those passions which degrade men and lead to nine tenths of the crime of the world he exalts it will be sought out and laughed over by lewd women and prurient boys and hoary headed old leches this notice of his volume will start to read it only the dregs of the social and moral world into which it goes that settles the question when men and women are led by their higher affinities they will be led straight away from walt witman's leaves of grass so walt the poet at age 40 not knowing what more is in store for me with linkin coming with a war coming with old age coming i say so long to you my friends at the conclusion of the third edition of leaves of grass the blue book of 1860 so long camarado this is no book who touches this touches a man is it night are we here together alone it is i you hold and who holds you i spring from the pages into your arms decease calls me forth oh dear friend whoever you are take this kiss i give it especially to you do not forget me i feel like one who has done work for the day to retire a while so long remember my words i may again return i love you i depart from materials i am as one disembodied triumphant dead walt walt walt walt didn't anyone ever teach you life begins at 40 no no no i wasn't to leave you so soon i had much more to do much more to sing much much much much more thank you