Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion?
- Awesome. When we start to like someone we build up an idea in our head of the kind of person they are. We build up images of what a relationship with this person would be like and live out scenarios in our mind. Whitman tries to beware the 'dreamer' of getting carried away in a land of make-believe (maya = illusions of the universe). When we fall in love we only see all the amazing qualities about that person. The poet suggests he doesn't want to be put on a pedestal.
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