to seem for moral purposes to be immoral, to seem pornographic for pure ends. The more honor to him that he had no fear of staining himself even when he accepted that which small minds call indecent!
Whitman has been accused not only of immorality and of materialism, but of irreligion. He is certainly not an adherent of any specific religion. In all matters his point of view is universal. Humanity, taken as a whole, has no one single faith. Whitman, representing all humanity in himself, accepts all human faiths, does not admit that any one is truer than the others:
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew.[1]
- ↑ Vol. I, p. 95.
