Walt Whitman - Poet of Democracy

On the long path of history, clapping across centuries and continents, and the graves of kings and the necks of dictators, seeking always a way of life where the people have their freedom, believing, praying, fighting, dying, we came this way.

The NBC University of the Air, a public service feature of the National Broadcasting Company and its independent affiliated stations, present another chapter in the historical series, We Came This Way, a dramatic account of man's struggle down through the ages for a democratic way of life. For listeners at home and overseas, we present chapter four of Walt Whitman, Port of Democracy, on We Came This

Way. I, Walt Whitman, Poet of Democracy, the tendency of whose pages is to destroy those old landmark, which tried and fashioned and set up, making impassable distinctions between the brethren of the great family, to make us love our fellow creatures, and own that all those social distinctions place others far higher or far lower than we, yet our human beings alike, at the length

of the same chain. Starting from fish-shaped Pominok where I was born, well begotten and raised by a perfect mother, after roaming many lands, lover of populist pavement, dweller in Manahatta my my city or on southern savannanels, or withdrawn to mews and meditates in some deep recess, and happy having studied the marking birds' toes as a flight of the mountain horse, solitary,

singing in the west, I spike up for a new world. The boy said you want to see me, Mr. Van Anden. Come in, Walt, and shut the door. Pull up a chair. Mr. Van Anden, this is another warning about what you're going to let me put in the paper in what you're not now see here walk with them you'll grant that I am the