I Was Looking a Long While
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
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 average man of to-day;It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts;It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,All for the average man of to-day.
