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130 And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes, For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me. Thus he writes To a Certain Civilian. So then the purpose of his volume is not to amuse people, nor to soothe sensitive ears, nor to delight students of metrics. His ideal is not the classic Æolian harp, but rather the hoarse locomotive, with its “madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all.” He has no fear of professors of poetry; he is content to contemplate the awe of a Colorado canyon:

“What do I care?”—Whitman seems to say—“all this is but literature”:

He sings not for the sake of singing, but that he may rouse men, educate them, inspire them: