
I thought I would write a brief endorsement of your friendly enterprise, translating and publishing in Germany, some of the poems of my Leaves of Grass. It has not been for my own country alone —ambitious as the saying so may seem— that I have composed that work. It has been to practically start an internationality of poems. The final aim of the United States of America is the solidarity of the world. What fails so far, may yet be accomplished by song, radiating, clustering, concentrating from all the lands of the earth, into a new chorus and diapason. One purpose of my chants is to cordially salute all foreign lands in America's name. And happy, most happy shall I be, to gain entrance and hearing among the great Germanic peoples.
