To a Historian

by Walt Whitman

To a Historian was published in Whitman's collection, Leaves of Grass (1855).

An illustration for the story To a Historian by the author Walt Whitman — W.J. Black, Walt Whitman portrait, 1848

You who celebrate bygones,
  Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life
      that has exhibited itself,
  Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,
      rulers and priests,
  I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself
      in his own rights,
  Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,
      (the great pride of man in himself,)
  Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
  I project the history of the future.

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