I Was Looking a Long While
by Walt Whitman
I was looking a long while for Intentions,
For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants -and now I have found it,
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject,)
It is no more in the legends than in all else,
It is in the present -it is this earth today,
It is in Democracy -(the purport and aim of all the past,)
It is the life of one man or one woman today -the average man of today,
It is in the languages, social customs, literature, arts,
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the modern -all for the average man of today.
