Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1860)

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10.

HISTORIAN! you who celebrate bygones!

You have explored the outward, the surface of the
races—the life that has exhibited itself,

You have treated man as the creature of politics,
aggregates, rulers, and priests;

But now I also, arriving, contribute something:

I, an habitué of the Alleghanies, treat man as he is in
the influences of Nature, in himself, in his own
inalienable rights,

Advancing, to give the spirit and the traits of new
Democratic ages, myself, personally,

(Let the future behold them all in me—Me, so
puzzling and contradictory—Me, a Manhattan-
ese, the most loving and arrogant of men;)

I do not tell the usual facts, proved by records and
documents,

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;

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,)

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.

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