(All serves, helps--but in
the centre of all, absorbing all, giving, for your purpose, the only
meaning and vitality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law,
stands Yourself.) To sing the Song of that law of average Identity, and
of Yourself, consistently with the divine law of the universal, is a
main intention of those "Leaves."
Something more may be added--for, while I am about it, I would make a
full confession. I also sent out "Leaves of Grass" to arouse and set
flowing in men's and women's hearts, young and old, endless streams of
living, pulsating love and friendship, directly from them to myself,
now and ever. To this terrible, irrepressible yearning, (surely more
or less down underneath in most human souls)--this never-satisfied
appetite for sympathy, and this boundless offering of sympathy--this
universal democratic comradeship-this old, eternal, yet ever-new
interchange of adhesiveness, so fitly emblematic of America--I have
given in that book, undisguisedly, declaredly, the openest expression.
Besides, important as they are in my purpose as emotional expressions
for humanity, the special meaning of the "Calamus" cluster of "Leaves
of Grass," (and more or less running through the book, and cropping
out in "Drum-Taps,") mainly resides in its political significance. In
my opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted development of comradeship,
the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all the
young fellows, north and south, east and west--it is by this, I say,
and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the
United States of the future, (I cannot too often repeat,) are to be
most effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal'd into a living
union.
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