WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 
From the many rich utterances of Whitman on Woman and 
Freedom, the reader naturally feels himself at a loss when 
called upon to repeat selections to others. At best, within the 
limits of a paper, the merest sketch or outline of Whitman’s 
conception of these subjects can be drawn. 
During his early childhood and youth Whitman spent many 
of his days in roaming along Paumanok’s shores, where his 
vision and soul were enthralled by the vistas of sands and sea 
stretching outward. And, if the sea winds blowing along the 
coast-line and the shining stars or the sunlit-crested waves 
had not as yet taught him fully to know their voices, still he 
had begun to think “a thought of the clef of the universe and 
of the future.” And he was not unmoved by the tirelessly 
tossing white arms when from the sea they beckoned him 
to launch his craft upon “the wild unrest,” the limitless 
waters of “eternal progress” and freedom. 
His early impression of woman was gathered from his own 
family circle, whose women-folk were strong in character and 
purpose. The halo of motherhood illumined his homely abode 
And the fact, too, that he was the outcome of a vigorous 
woman ancestry had not failed to leave an indelible mark 
upon the poet. 
He begins his songs in recognition of self and personality 
as first, “One’s self I sing, a simple separate person;” then, 
placing his voice where the resonance is most clear and beau¬ 
tiful, he sings, removing all obstructions, that his tones may 
be distinct and pure: — 
1 Read before the Walt Whitman Fellowship, Boston, November 19, 1896. 
Printed in Poet-Lore, April-June, 1897; also in pamphlet form, Boston Poet- 
Lore Company, 1897. 
