WHO am I?
I have been reading Walt Whitman, and know not whether he be me, or
me he;—
Or otherwise!
Oh, blue skies! oh, rugged mountains! oh, mighty, rolling Niagara!
Oh, chaos and everlasting bosh!
I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a
fool, an idiot!
Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too,
perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close.
We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine cañons of the
future!
We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff,
jeer, and babble babble—die!
Serve them right.
What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the
glory of Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman?
Start not! ’Tis no end of a minstrel show who perpends this query;
’Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family
Herald,
No charade, acrostic (double or single), conundrum, riddle, rebus,
anagram, or other guess-work.
I answer thus: We both write truths—great, stern, solemn,
unquenchable truths—couched in more or less ridiculous
language.
I, as a rule use rhyme, he does not; therefore, I am his Superior
(which is also a lake in his great and glorious country).
I scorn, with the unutterable scorn of the despiser of pettiness,
to take a mean advantage of him.
He writes, he sells, he is read (more or less); why then should I
rack my brains and my rhyming dictionary? I will see the
public hanged first!
I sing of America, of the United States, of the stars and stripes
of Oshkosh, of Kalamazoo, and of Salt Lake City.
I sing of the railroad cars, of the hotels, of the breakfasts, the
lunches, the dinners, and the suppers;
Of the soup, the fish, the entrées, the joints, the game, the
puddings and the ice-cream.
I sing all—I eat all—I sing in turn of Dr. Bluffem’s Antibilious
Pills.
No subject is too small, too insignificant, for Nature’s poet.
I sing of the cocktail, a new song for every cocktail, hundreds of
songs, hundreds of cocktails.
It is a great and a glorious land! The Mississippi, the Missouri,
and a million other torrents roll their waters to the
ocean.
It is a great and glorious land! The Alleghanies, the Catskills, the
Rockies (see atlas for other mountain ranges too numerous
to mention) pierce the clouds!
And the greatest and most glorious product of this great and glorious
land is Walt Whitman;
This must be so, for he says it himself.
There is but one greater than he between the rising and the setting
sun.
There is but one before whom he meekly bows his humbled head.
Oh, great and glorious land, teeming producer of all things, creator
of Niagara, and inventor of Walt Whitman,
Erase your national advertisements of liver pads and cures for
rheumatism from your public monuments, and inscribe thereon
in letters of gold the name _Judy_.
_Judy._