Gregory: "Tell me the truth: can anybody out there truthfully claim to have read the whole of poems like “Song of the Exposition” or “Song of the Broad Axe”?"
I read the whole book, doggedly, some years ago, so yeah, I must have read those guys. I don't remember them specifically, but still....
as one who has, to the best of his ability, read every poem by Whitman, I have to say -- you'd have to pay me good money to read every poem by Longfellow.
Here's a short late poem from Whitman:
A Clear Midnight
This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done.
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
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