By this writer the rules of polite circles are dismissed with scorn. I do not press my finger across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart. No sniveller, or tea-drinking poet, no puny clawback or prude, is Walt Whitman. He will bring poems fit to fill the days and nights - fit for men and women with the attributes of throbbing blood and flesh. The body, he teaches, is beautiful.
Sex is also beautiful.
Nature he proclaims inherently pure. He works the muscle of the male and the teeming fibre of the female throughout his writings, as wholesome realities, impure only by deliberate intention and effort. Follow me and there shall be taller and nobler crops of humanity on the earth. In the Leaves of Grass are the facts of eternity and immortality, largely treated. Happiness is no dream, and perfection is no dream.