"Are you the new person drawn toward me?" by Walt… | Poetry Foundation

Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and...

Share Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me? Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

related reading

• Walt Whitman - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
• Song of Myself (1892 version) | The Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org
• So Long! by Walt Whitman - Poems | Academy of American Poetspoets.org
• O Captain! My Captain! | The Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry | The Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org
• dear friend or perfect strangernicoles.substack.com
• Song of Myself, 51 by Walt Whitman - Poems | Academy of American Poetspoets.org
• All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetryallpoetry.com
• EMERSON - ESSAYS - SELF-RELIANCEarchive.vcu.edu
• Mythologies | The Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org
• If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetryallpoetry.com
• Walt Whitman on How Literature Bolsters Democracy and Why a Robust Society Is a Feminist Society – The Marginalianthemarginalian.org