Words! book-words! What are you? Words no more, for harken and see, My song is there in the open air, and I must sing, With the banner and pennant a-flapping. No longer does he exult in his mere physical body. Lines like these he now edits from his early editions: How dare a sick man, or an obedient man, write poems for these States? Also lines like these: O to be relieved of distinctions! to make as much of vices as virtues! O to level occupations and the sexes! O to bring all to common ground! O adhesiveness! O the pensive aching to be together,--you know not why, and I know not why. He omits everywhere freely now from the early editions, not from the "Children of Adam," however, though Emerson advised it with earnestness. The Whitmans were an obstinate race. "As obstinate as a Whitman," had been a degree of comparison; and here was one of them who had taken a position before the world and had maintained it in the face of persecution. Retreat would be impossible; but it is noteworthy that he wrote no more poems of sex and that he put forth no more of his tall talk and braggadocio. Swiftly he had become the poet of the larger life: the immaterial in man, the soul. _Drum-Taps_, 1866, gives us the first glimpse of this new Whitman. The tremendous poem, "Rise, O Days, from Your Fathomless Deeps," marks the transition. In it he declares that he had, with hunger of soul, devoured only what earth had given him, that he had sought to content himself simply with nature and the material world. Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious. He does not condemn this earlier phase of his development: 'Twas well, O soul--'twas a good preparation you gave me, Now we advance our latest and ampler hunger to fill. Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us. Now for the first time he realizes the meaning of Democracy, the deep inner meaning of Man and America. Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads through farms, only half satisfied, One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low; The cities I loved so well I abandon'd and left, I sped to the certainties suitable to me, Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature's dauntlessness, I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only, I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire--on the water and air I waited long; But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted, I have witness'd the true lightning, I have witness'd my cities electric, I have lived to behold man burst forth.