I Was Looking a Long While
I Was Looking a Long While - fact Summary
Included in Leaves of Grass
This short poem, included in Leaves of Grass, declares that the clue to history and meaning is found in the present day rather than ancient fables. Whitman identifies democracy and the life of the average contemporary man or woman as the true continuity of the past. He locates significance in everyday languages, customs, arts, machines, politics, and international exchange, emphasizing ordinary life as the core subject of poetic and historical understanding.
Read Complete AnalysesI WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants—and now I have found it; It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;) It is no more in the legends than in all else; It is in the present—it is this earth to-day; It is in Democracy—(the purport and aim of all the past;) It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—the average man of to-day; It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts; It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, All for the average man of to-day.
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