I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all), I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself; And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. My foothold is tennon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time. Happy is the man that has climbed to the height on which Walt Whitman stood. Happy is he that has mastered the haste and impatience of youth, and is content to bide his time. Happy is he that has so far solved the problem of life as to know that reward is not received from others and cannot be withheld by others, but can be given only by ourselves. Such a man has struck the subtle harmony which unites his soul with the universal life and he knows that no one but himself can cut the cord. To a great mass of men and women, Walt Whitman is known almost alone by that portion of his work called “Children of Adam.” These poems have called forth the fiercest opposition and the bitterest denunciation, and if the common judgment is correct, they are obscene and vile. While this portion of his book is by far the smallest part, still, before the court of public opinion, he must stand or fall upon these lines. In one sense public opinion is right, for unless these stanzas can be defended, his point of view is wrong, and Walt Whitman’s work will die. We need not accept all he did, or give unstinted praise to all his work, but his scheme is consistent in every portion of his thought, and his point of view will determine the place he shall fill in art and life. It is in this work that the courage and personality of Whitman towers so high above every other man that ever wrote. It is easy for the essayist to speak in general terms and glittering phrases in defense of Whitman’s work. His defenders have been many, but he alone has had the courage to speak. It is not difficult to insist that his “A Woman Waits for Me” is a tremendous work, and as pure as nature’s generating power. Still perhaps few would dare to read it aloud in an assembly of men and women. If Whitman is right, the world is wrong. This poem, and others of its like, in plain words deals of the deepest, strongest, most persistent feelings that move the sentient world. In proportion as they are deeper and stronger than any other, they should the more be the subject of thought and art. And still ages of established convention have made the world pretend ignorance until no one dares defend his right to life but this brave and simple man.