“I Celebrate Myself“ Walt Whitman = American Literature poem “I celebrate myself, and sing myself“

From Song of Myself By Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 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. In this version of the poem, Walt Whitman claims to be 37. He was born on May 31, 1819, so he wrote that particular line in 1856 or early 1857 (unless he used “thirty-seven“ for the sound, really being some other age when he wrote the line--we should allow for poetic license!).