18
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for
    conquer’d and slain persons.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? 
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit
    in which they are won.

I beat and pound for the dead,
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Vivas to those who have fail’d! 
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! 
And to those themselves who sank in the sea! 
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! 
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

     19
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments
    with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? 
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the
    side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish? 
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
    through the woods? 
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20 Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity
    goes to the fourth-remov’d,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with
    doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.