Walt Whitman - I Was Looking a Long While

I was looking a long while for Intentions,
For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these
chants--and now I have found it,
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
accept nor reject,)
It is no more in the legends than in all else,
It is in the present--it is this earth to-day,
It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,)
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of to-day,
It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,
It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,
politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the modern--all for the average man of to-day.