I Was Looking a Long While.

I was Looking a Long While.

I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of
the past for myself, and for these chants—and
now I have found it; It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I
neither accept nor reject;) It is no more in the legends than in all else; It is in the present—it is this earth to-day; It is in Democracy—(the purport and aim of all the
past;) It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—the av-
erage man of to-day; It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts; It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, ma-
chinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements,
and the interchange of nations, All for the average man of to-day.

Part of the cluster LEAVES OF GRASS.