"A call in the midst of the crowd,/My own voice, orotund [strong and clear] sweeping and final," says the poet, who assumed the position of prophet while acknowledging his kinship with mankind. He says, "I know perfectly well my own egotism," but he would extend it to include all humanity and bring "you whoever you are flush with myself" He sees the injustice that prevails in society but recognizes that the reality beneath the corruption is deathless: "The weakest and shallowest is deathless with me."
In section 43, Whitman states that he does not despise religion but asserts that his own faith embraces all "worship ancient and modern." He practices all religions and even looks beyond them to "what is yet untried." This unknown factor will not fail the suffering and the dead. In the next section, the poet expresses his desire to "launch all men and women . . . into the Unknown" by stripping them of what they already know. In this way he will show them their relationship with eternity. "We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,/There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them." The poet is conscious of the confrontation of his self with limitless time and limitless space and realizes that he and his listeners are products of ages past and future.
Section 45 again deals with eternity and the ages of man. Everything leads to the mystical union with God, the "great Camerado." In section 46, the poet launches himself on the "perpetual journey," urging all to join him and uttering the warning, "Not 1, not any one else can travel that road for you,/You must travel it for yourself." The poet (section 47) says that he is a teacher, but he hopes that those he teaches will learn to assert their own individuality: "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." Section 48 repeats the idea that "the soul is not more than the body," just as "the body is not more than the soul." Not even God is more important than one's self. The poet asks man not to be "curious about God" because God is everywhere and in everything: "In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass."
