Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/19

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Leaves of Grass.
11

I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires
that were threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering
fires,
I will give them complete abandonment,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and
of love,
(For who but I should understand love, with all its
sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

23. I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
I advance from the people en-masse in their own
spirit,
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

24. Omnes! Omnes!
Let others ignore what they may,
I make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that
part also,
I am myself just as much evil as good—And I say
there is in fact no evil,
Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to
the earth, or to me, as anything else.

25.I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate
a Religion—I too go to the wars,
It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries
thereof, the conqueror's shouts,
They may rise from me yet, and soar above every
thing.

26. Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are
for Religion's sake.