“One’s Self I Sing” is a poem by Walt Whitman, published in 1867 as the first poem for the final phase of Leaves of Grass. Although the general attitude towards the poem was not favorable, in July 1855 Whitman received the famous letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson in appreciation of his words of strength, freedom, and power, as well as, “meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy Nature.” As the first phase of Leaves of Grass was published in 1855 most of the press was unaware of the piece, but if there was an opinion about the poem it was mostly negative. According to the Boston Intelligencer, Leaves of Grass was a “heterogeneous mass of bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense”. Source: Wikipedia (en)