The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor
breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
Demand the most copious and close companionship
of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh,
nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with
freedom and
command, leading not following,
Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with
sweet and lusty
flesh clear of taint,
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents
and governors,
as to say Who are you?
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd,
never obedient,
Those of inland America.
more poems by Walt Whitman