This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.[1]
Since Whitman feels that he is as vast as nature, he rejects nothing of what he finds in nature, but seeks merely to transform it. At heart he would like to be as natural as trees and beasts.[2] Nor was he ever again so happy as on
The day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn.[3]
But he always aspires, through the body, to the life of the soul:
And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul,
Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.[4]
And when he would rise above the world and escape from things, he sends to the soul this lyric summons:
Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!
To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters.[5]
