Poets to Come
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, atheltic, continental, greater
than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two inidicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
— Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. 1891-1892.
