I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
The critic Christine Froula  wrote: 
 While Pound recognized the authentic American eloquence of Whitman’s ‘barbaric yawp,’ the self-conscious craftsman in him winced at the ‘exceeding great stench’ of Whitman’s ‘crudity,’ ‘an exceedingly nauseating pill’ which he parodically exemplified as ‘Lo! Behold, I eat watermelons.’" 
 This shows that, while Pound saw the importance of Whitman as an American poet, he previously did not like his writing because he thought it was crude.