And I did indeed read some Whitman, just at midnight. The first section of Leaves of Grass, “Inscriptions”, which of course starts with “One’s-Self I Sing”, and contains familiar poems such as “In Cabin’d Ships at Sea”, “I Hear America Singing”, “Starting from Paumanok” and the superb “Song of Myself”. But among them I relished one rarely cited, and which I had forgotten: “To a Historian”. To someone like me, who considers himself both a historian and a Science Fiction writer, this one is particularly appropriate.
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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