Song of Myself
By Walt Whitman

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia

Sources

Philadelphia : David McKay, 1892Our text is based on the edition of Leaves of Grass created for the UVa etext Center in collaboration with the Walt Whitman Archive.Page images are of the copy of the 1892 edition housed in the Albert Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, and adapted from the surrogates at the Walt Whitman Archive.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself" . Leaves of Grass, David McKay, 1892 , 29-79 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Whitman/whitman-song. Accessed: 2024-05-16T17:04:45.216Z

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29 SONG OF MYSELF. 1 I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. 2 Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.