by Whitman · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
Summons future poets to justify him; the speaker hurries back into darkness, expecting the main things from posterity. Prophet-poet, immortality through verse.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet, Immortality Through Verse Themes & Concepts: Immortality of Art Fame, Artist and Society Forms & Genres: Free Verse
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: INSCRIPTIONS
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.