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Leaves of Grass (1860)
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10.
| HISTORIAN! you who celebrate bygones! |
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You have explored the outward, the surface of the
races—the life that has exhibited itself, |
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You have treated man as the creature of politics,
aggregates, rulers, and priests; |
| But now I also, arriving, contribute something: |
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I, an habitué of the Alleghanies, treat man as he is in
the influences of Nature, in himself, in his own inalienable rights, |
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Advancing, to give the spirit and the traits of new
Democratic ages, myself, personally, |
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(Let the future behold them all in me—Me, so
puzzling and contradictory—Me, a Manhattan- ese, the most loving and arrogant of men;) |
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I do not tell the usual facts, proved by records and
documents, |
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What I tell, (talking to every born American,)
requires no further proof than he or she who will hear me, will furnish, by silently meditating alone; |
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I press the pulse of the life that has hitherto seldom
exhibited itself, but has generally sought con- cealment, (the great pride of man, in himself,) |
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I illuminate feelings, faults, yearnings, hopes—I
have come at last, no more ashamed nor afraid; |
| Chanter of Personality, outlining a history yet to be, |
| I project the ideal man, the American of the future. |