blest members of society, the poor, the slaves, even the delinquent and the fallen. Amid the evils that silence him he numbers
The slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like.[1]
To his banquet he invites all men:
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.[2]
As friend he seeks a humble man:
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by others for deeds done.[3]
In Tolstoi this attitude is a pose; but not in Whitman, for Whitman feels that he, like his humble friends, is stained with sin:
Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run,
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
I walk with delinquents with passionate love,
I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?[4]
He is not ashamed to turn even to a woman of the streets with that poetic generosity which purifies all things:
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves
