The next daring declaration is: 'I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard/ Nature without check, with original energy'. One should remember that Whitman had begun to write this poem after hearing a lecture by Emerson in which he had 'called for an authentic American culture to celebrate the common, everyday things in American life'. This optimism and energy permeate the whole poem. He therefore will begin to express, and 'hoping to cease not until death'. the same.' He probably means that he, like everyone there, is born from the same soil. my blood, formed from this soil.born here from. He then begins another impassioned expression about “my tongue', which is another symbol of expression (or the democrats, and also poetic, freedom of speech): 'My tongue. In the 4th and 5 lines, the poet describes the physical setting he is leaning, at ease, on a lawn observing a leaf of summer grass. This is the first indication of its theme of unity of all life and nature the inherent transcendence. Whitman begins the poem by asserting the idea of self and its identification with all selves, and its identification with all selves and emphasizing his belief in the interrelationship of all beings and all matter. It is a poem of democracy and liberty, the liberty of expression, of life and even of frank declarations of emotions as well as rebellion and repressed desires including the sensual and sexual.

Radically democratic and explicitly sexual, the poem, from the very start, goes beyond even the extended bound of transcendentalist thought in its celebration of the relation between physical and spiritual, individual and universal. Whitman situates himself and his poem outdoors and outside convention and tradition. The poem presents not merely a mind thinking or a voice speaking, but an entire body reclining on the ground, leaning and loafing, 'observing a spear of summer grass'. This is, as we will see very soon, a poem that celebrates the basic oneness of all people, the power of their life and freedom, their oneness with the nature also. The very third line establishes identity between the reader and the poet. But then the third line quickly conveys the reason behind the arrogance the poet is so proud and arrogant because 'every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you'. The second line is even more daring and shocking it gives an impression, at first, that the poet is almost presuming and conceited : 'And what I assume, you shall assume'.

The reader is jolted into attention and is attracted towards the poet: 'I celebrate myself, and sing myself'. Whitman begins the first section in a tone of boastful authority that underlies the tone of the whole poem. The beginning of this poem establishes the Americanness in its subject, form and tone.

Song of myself poem