I Too Am Not A Bit

From Section 52 of "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass, the final section of the poem, in which Whitman compares himself to a spotted hawk whose cry cannot be tamed. The "barbaric yawp" — an onomatopoeic term for a loud, raw cry — is Whitman's deliberate embrace of what classical literary refinement rejects: unpolished, bodily, democratic expression. The lines conclude just before Whitman bequeaths himself to the earth, making the yawp his last act before dissolution into nature.