Published Works

Books by Whitman

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You Felons on Trial in Courts.

1YOU felons on trial in courts;

You convicts in prison-cells—you sentenced assassins,
chain'd and hand-cuff'd with iron;

Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?

Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not
chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron?

2You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or ob-
scene in your rooms,

Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than
myself?

3O culpable!

I acknowledge—I exposé!

(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you
make me wince,

I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)

4Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked;

Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell's tides
continually run;

Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me;

I walk with delinquents with passionate love;

I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and
prostitutes myself,

And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I
deny myself?

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.