{
 "id": "walt-whitman/small-the-theme-of-my-chant",
 "title": "Small the Theme of My Chant",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 328,
 "container": "Sands at Seventy",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1888,
  "venue": "November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888)",
  "note": "Printed in “Sands at Seventy,” the verse section of November Boughs, and gathered into Leaves of Grass as the First Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitgoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "sands-at-seventy.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 6,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 199,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest⁠—namely, One’s-Self⁠—a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse;⁠—I say the Form complete is worthier far. The Female equally with the Male, I sing.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor cease at the theme of One’s-Self. I speak the word of the modern, the word En-Masse.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My Days I sing, and the Lands⁠—with interstice I knew of hapless War.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(O friend, whoe’er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than once, and link’d together let us go.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}