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.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root -
In his 1909 essay “What I Feel About Walt Whitman,” Pound contrasts his distaste for Whitman with the idea that Whitman “is America… . He does ‘chant the crucial stage’ and he is the ‘voice triumphant.’” Pound is saying here that he has grown up and is over any previous grudge he had against Whitman.