Before closing this section, Whitman returns[294] to the Adamic idea, as though to make his meaning unmistakable. In him, Adam has nearly circled the world, and now looks out across the Pacific to his first birth-place in the East; and still his work is unaccomplished. Still must he go on seeking for his bride, the Future. The passion of creation is upon him, he is strained with yearning for that towards which his soul gravitates. As we finish these poems, we remember how at this time their author impressed those who approached him with two equal qualities, his force and his purity: for great passion is a clear wine in a chaste vessel. He had a right to say as his last word on this subject, "be not afraid of my body"; for, indeed, it was his soul, enamoured of all things, wholesome and pure. * * * * * After these poems, comes the "Song of the Road," and other familiar pieces, and then another group wholly new. These appear to have been written in the autumn of 1859,[295] and are called _Calamus_; a name either for a reed or for the sweet-flag,[296] which occurs in the Bible and in the pages of Greek and Latin writers, but is here used of a common American pond-reed, a sort of tall sedge or great spear of grass, a yard or so in height, emitting a pungent watery smell, whose root is used for chewing. In these poems he asserts the soul's need of society, for life and growth. The gospel of self-realisation thus becomes a social gospel, and the thought gives a political significance to these, the most esoteric of all Whitman's poems. He seems more than usually sensitive about them, and dreads to have them misunderstood. Proud and jealous, he would drive all but a few away from his confidences. They are only intended, he says,[297] for his comrades; for it is only they who will understand them. But in the more obvious sense the poems are for all. It is to comradeship and not to institutions that Whitman looks for a political redemption. He will bind America indissolubly together into the fellowship of his friends.[298] Their friendship shall be called after him,[299] and in his name they shall solve all the problems of Freedom, and bring America to victory. Lovers are the strength of Liberty, comrades perpetuate Equality; America will be established above disaster by the love of her poet's lovers. Then he turns to himself and his own friends, or rather, perhaps, to his own conscious need for friends. It is curious when one thinks of it, that we have no record of any close friendship, save that of Emerson, dating from these days. And he who knew and loved so many men and women, seems to have carried forward with him no equal friendship from the years of his youth. In this respect, he was solitary as a pioneer. He longed for Great Companions, but he did not meet them at this time upon the open road of daily intercourse.