...this poem in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982). I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease — observing a spear of summer grass. (p. 27) In these lines the great work is begun, and the secret of success has been given. And what...

...passed on her way." And an American genius, Walt Whitman, celebrated loafing in Leaves of Grass (1855): I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. The related word loafer is even earlier, attested in Utica, New York, in 1830 and New York City in...

...ideas in support or rejection of the poet's view. SW? SET from Song of Myself (sections 1 and 2) l I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume,...at my ease .... observing a spear of summer grass. Houses and rooms are full of perfumes .... the shelves are crowded with perfumes, 10 I breathe the...

...but when Whitman looked inside himself, he was content with whatever he found there. He even wrote, I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 29 The true inner soul needs no improvement; once you have found it you need not work to change it...

...but when Whitman looked inside himself, he was content with whatever he found there. He even wrote, I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.29 The true inner soul needs no improvement; once you have found it you need not work to change...

...of "Song of Myself," begins with the contemplation of a simplified, stripped-down natural landscape ("I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass"), he has no difficulty assimilating the forces represented by the machine. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"...

...the malleable, plastic world that it bends to its will. Whitman, in 'Song of Myself, may insist that 'I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass', but there is no grass, no summer, no loafer (despite the title-page illustration done from a photograph...

...NEXT CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD Walt Whitman (1 819- 1892) Leaves of Grass. 1900 14 Walt Whitman i I CELEBRATE myself; And what I assume you shall assume;...loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. Houses and rooms are full of perfumes — the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance...

...the equally casual one that is part of the poem's playful variation on the traditional epic opening: I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. (11. 4-5, my emphasis) Playful though he may be, Whitman thus takes pains to make sure that we understand...

...the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. From Song of Myself* 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every...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...