Read "Poets to Come" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
1. Poets to come! / Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and what we are for; / But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, / You must justify me.
2. I but write one or two indicative 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.