O democracy! O my world-brother!
I am Walt Whitman! I have been to Oxford. I too am wise, I am learned.
I salute you! Je vous salue, Omnes! Omnes! I am a scholar.
Home of learning! Oxford, mingled up with the past, the Greek, the Roman, the Sanscrit, all these are thine. But there is America, there is Maine, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, [Massachusetts], Delaware.
Ah, Latitude 41°. Oh, Longitude 74°.
Ye are one! Red-skin and White-skin, Proctor and Bulldogs, Boden-scholar and Vice-Chancellor, ye are all one! O glory of interjections! Oh!
I am one—I am all! Who is the great poet but I?
I am Walt Whitman. You are a fool.
From The Shotover Papers. Oxford, May 16, 1874.