Song of himself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

This is the first stanza of Song of Myself, the first poem of "Leaves of Grass", the collection of poems by Walt Withman.
This American author is my favourite one . He was not only a poet, and that is not a minor detail, since he worked as a journalist and fiction writer for many years before he became one the most famous poets of American literature.
Walt Withman was born in 1819 thirty years after George Washington became the first president of the United States. In a way, Walt’s character was influenced by American spirit of freedom patriotism and opportunities. This certainly contributed to what later came to be his masterpiece.
As mentioned before, Walt Withman started his career as a poet late in his life while most of the romantic poets he looked up to such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Byron had done their most important works by their thirties.
The following verses considered, as many others, autobiographical expose this fact.
“I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death”.