Shut Not Your Doors
Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the
intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.
— Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. 1891-1892.
