Image: Walt Whitman Library of Congress/Getty Images
Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”
In “I Hear America Singing,” Walt Whitman’s speaker is offering a musical tribute to the laborers of America as they “sing,” that is work, cheerfully. This 19th century hat-tip also recognizes the partiers who fill the night time with their good cheer.
Introduction and Text of “I Hear America Singing”
Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” is a song of praise. As a useful metaphor, “song” becomes the tool with which the speaker in Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” expresses the cheerful nature of the people he daily encounters in their labors and in also in their play.
By claiming to hear them “singing,” he is rendering them cheerful and skilled in their labor. The speaker’s heart is overflowing with praise for his fellow citizens. As the speaker commences his tribute, he reports that he hears “America singing.”
Each song he encounters is unique. Each “song” constitutes a different carol, not ordinary in the least, but each one offering praise and demonstrating joy in its being.
The joy and praise impress the speaker so much that he seems to be bursting with pride to be a part of such an honorable conglomeration of laboring folks. His admiration makes him abundantly happy as he sings himself, making his poem.
As the speaker observes his fellow citizens, he becomes optimistic, and his feelings no doubt color his reportage. He offers what one might consider to be an exaggeration of the joy and gratitude inspiring these people who are ordinary workers. These folks are certainly not likely to become sycophants of the nothing-to-lose-but-our-chains crowd.
Each of the eleven lines sprawls across the page and spills into the adjoining line to facilitate a new line. The elongated sentences must be broken in unusual ways to accommodate the thoughts that this speaker wishes to share. Whitman’s free verse style virtually always employs this rambling, sprawling form as he catalogs all the things his speakers see, hear, think, feel, or enjoy.
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Reading of “I Hear America Singing”
Commentary on“I Hear America Singing”
Walt Whitman’s “I Hear American Singing” features a speaker who is offering a musical tribute to the laborers of America; they cheerfully sing as they work. This 19th century effusion also recognizes the partiers who fill the night time with their good cheer.
First Movement: Varied Laborers
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The speaker then commences listing the varied laborers whom he hears singing their joyous, praise songs. First, he hears the mechanics. Each mechanic remains busy working in his own unique way. The speaker finds their manner “blithe and strong.” He then mentions the carpenter whose song sings out the measurement of “plank or beam.”
The mason is singing while he prepares himself for his workday even before he leaves for work. The speaker hears the boatman caroling about the items that he possesses, items that fill his boat, while the deckhand also is singing on the steamboat’s deck. The shoemaker is also singing, working at his bench, as the hat maker offers his carols where he stands.
Second Movement: A Mother’s Delicious Singing
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
Continuing his catalog, the speaker hears the “wood-cutter’s song” and the song of the farmer, who is plowing his fields in the morning, at noon, and even as the sun sets in the evening. A mother’s carols exemplify a “delicious” song.
The young wife is singing as she works, and a girl, who is likely serving as a maid, also sings as she sews and does the laundry. All of these ordinary folks are performing their tasks uniquely—each in his/her own unique way. They are not a faceless mass of working slobs.
They are priceless human beings living their American dreams. Thus, they deserve respect, affection, and attention, and this speaker is revealing the love and cheerful attitudes these hard-working Americans are portraying as they simply go about their daily work routines.
Third Movement: Young Fellows and Party Time
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
There is a time for work, and there is a time for leisure. The speaker’s respect for work is equaled by his respect for party time. The time of fellowship is also important as the revelers sing their leisure time.
Just as workers, they have offered their service, now as partiers they demonstrate that time away from work is also valuable. The speaker describes a scene of the partiers as they sing open-mouthed. They are young, cordial, hale and hearty as they carouse singing their “melodious songs.”
While day time offers all the beautiful songs of various workers and service providers, night time offers a time for the beautiful songs of leisure, fellowship, and renewal of spirit. The sweet melodies of work and leisure are all significant and well worth noting.
Image: Walt Whitman – Mathew Brady – Walt Whitman Archive
Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”
Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” is an elegy upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, who guided the Union through the terrible Civil War only to be assassinated after victory had been achieved. The speaker metaphorizes Lincoln into the fallen Captain of a victorious ship, creating Whitman’s most famous expression of national grief.
Introduction and Text of “O Captain! My Captain!”
In Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!,” the speaker presents Abraham Lincoln as the Captain of a ship that has survived a fearful voyage and finally reached the safety of port.
The ship represents the Union, while the Captain represents Lincoln, whose leadership brought the nation through the Civil War. The Library of Congress identifies the poem specifically as Whitman’s 1865 dirge for Lincoln.
The poem becomes especially poignant because Lincoln dies at the very moment that the nation can celebrate victory. The ship has weathered every storm, the prize has been won, and the people are rejoicing, yet the Captain lies dead upon the deck. The public celebration and the speaker’s private grief therefore exist side by side.
Whitman wrote other elegies for Lincoln, most notably “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” The two poems approach Lincoln’s death differently. “Lilacs” expands personal grief into a profound contemplation of death and national healing, while “O Captain! My Captain!” concentrates its emotional power upon the fallen leader and the terrible irony of his death at the moment of victory.
In my earlier essays on Whitman’s poems, I have discussed the speaker’s recognition that death is an integral part of life. That recognition becomes particularly painful here because Lincoln’s death occurs after his great national task has been accomplished. The Captain has brought the ship safely home, but he cannot step ashore to receive the honors prepared for him.
The poem was written in response to Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 and first appeared later that year. Whitman subsequently placed it among his poems remembering Lincoln. The Walt Whitman Archive identifies the Captain as a symbolic representation of Lincoln and the ship as the Union that he had steered through the war.
Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
Commentary on “O Captain! my Captain! ”
The speaker mourns Abraham Lincoln while confronting the painful irony of national victory accompanied by personal loss.
First Stanza: “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead..
The first line announces the central irony of the entire elegy. The “fearful trip” is the Civil War, and the ship is the Union. The voyage has ended successfully because the Union has survived the conflict, but the Captain who guided the nation through the storm has been killed.
The phrase “the prize we sought is won” points directly toward the preservation of the Union. The ship has endured the terrible “rack,” or storm, and now approaches port. The historical reality behind the metaphor is therefore essential: the war has ended, victory has come, and Lincoln has been assassinated.
The speaker then creates a scene of national rejoicing. Bells ring, people celebrate, and eyes follow the victorious vessel as it approaches. These details suggest the immense public significance of the Union’s victory after four years of civil conflict.
But the speaker suddenly turns from public celebration to private anguish with “But O heart! heart! heart!” The repeated word “heart” seems almost to stop the celebration in its tracks. The speaker cannot participate in the rejoicing because his attention is fixed upon the blood appearing on the deck.
The “bleeding drops of red” transform the victorious ship into a place of death. The image is particularly powerful because Lincoln’s assassination occurred just as the national crisis represented by the voyage had reached its conclusion. Victory and death occupy the same physical space.
The Captain is therefore Abraham Lincoln, but the speaker never names him. This omission allows Lincoln to become both a historical individual and a symbolic national father. The Whitman Archive notes that Whitman grouped the poem with his other Lincoln poems under “Memories of President Lincoln.”
The speaker’s grief is made more poignant by the fact that Lincoln cannot enjoy the victory he helped achieve. The people on shore can celebrate because the voyage has ended; the speaker can only mourn because the Captain lies dead.
Second Stanza: “O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells”
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead.
The second stanza makes the speaker’s grief even more personal. He begs the Captain to rise because the entire nation is waiting to honor him. The flag is flying, the bugle is sounding, and the people are crowding the shores to welcome their victorious leader.
The repeated phrase “For you” emphasizes the tragic appropriateness of the celebration. Everything has been prepared for Lincoln. The people are celebrating the victory that his leadership helped secure, yet the person whom they have come to honor cannot hear their voices.
The speaker then calls him “dear father.” This expression is particularly significant in an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, whose public image after his assassination became associated with paternal leadership of a divided nation. The Captain is simultaneously the leader of the ship and the beloved father of the speaker.
The phrase “This arm beneath your head!” brings the historical tragedy into an intimate physical scene. The speaker holds Lincoln’s head in his arm as though the dead president were still capable of hearing and responding. The gesture makes the enormous national tragedy intensely personal.
The speaker then says, “It is some dream.” His mind resists what his eyes know. He has not merely lost a political leader; he has lost the Captain who has accompanied him through the fearful voyage.
The relationship between this poem and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” becomes important here. In “Lilacs,” the speaker eventually moves from the immediate shock of Lincoln’s death toward an acceptance of death as part of a larger spiritual reality. “O Captain! My Captain!” remains much closer to the immediate wound.
Paramahansa Yogananda teaches that “Our real self, the soul, is immortal.” This spiritual reality is one the speaker, in his present deep state of mourning, is incapable of accepting, because he remains immersed in the human experience of loss.
The speaker cannot yet see beyond the physical body lying upon the deck. The suffering speaker can touch the Captain, but he cannot awaken him. The victory is real, but so is the terrible absence of the man who made that victory possible.
Third Stanza: “My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still”
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
The third stanza finally forces the speaker to acknowledge the physical reality of Lincoln’s death. The claim “My Captain does not answer” leaves no room for the dream that he might awaken. All color has gone from his lips and his pulse has ceased.
The speaker again uses “My father,” emphasizing the intimate attachment that has made Lincoln’s death so devastating. The historical president has become, within the speaker’s emotional world, a beloved father whose absence cannot be compensated for by public celebration.
The ship, meanwhile, has reached safety. The statement “The ship is anchor’d safe and sound” is a direct confirmation that the Union has survived the Civil War. The voyage is “closed and done,” and the “victor ship” has arrived with the object of its struggle won.
The tragic paradox is now complete. Lincoln has accomplished the task represented by the voyage, but he has been denied the opportunity to witness the peaceful arrival of the ship. The nation has won, but its leader has fallen.
The command “Exult O shores, and ring O bells!” acknowledges the legitimate joy of the nation. The speaker does not ask the people to stop celebrating. Instead, he separates himself from them with the word “But.” They may rejoice; he must mourn.
This distinction is central to the poem’s identity as an elegy for Abraham Lincoln. The poem does not simply lament a dead man. It dramatizes the strange emotional condition of a nation that has achieved victory while simultaneously losing the man who led it through the crisis.
In “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman broadens Lincoln’s death into a contemplative musing upon universal mortality and the possibility of spiritual reconciliation.
The Library of Congress describes that poem as an elegy concerned with universal death and national healing, while “O Captain! My Captain!” concentrates more directly upon the public and personal grief surrounding Lincoln.
The final image returns to the deck. The speaker walks there with a “mournful tread,” remaining beside the body of the Captain while the nation celebrates. The physical movement is small, but emotionally it carries the full weight of the assassination.
The repetition of “Fallen cold and dead” gives the poem its final emotional blow. The Captain is not merely absent; he has fallen at the precise moment that the ship reaches safety. The repeated words therefore connect Lincoln’s death permanently with the nation’s victory.
Paramahansa Yogananda explains that death does not destroy the spiritual essence, stating that “the soul or spiritual essence of man is also indestructible.” Such a teaching provides a spiritual reality beyond the speaker’s immediate grief, although the speaker does not attempt to resolve his sorrow through such a doctrine at his point in his suffering.
Instead, the speaker remains upon the deck with Lincoln. The people on shore celebrate the end of the war, while the speaker remains emotionally attached to the fallen Captain. This separation gives the poem its extraordinary poignancy. The poem’s fame rests partly upon this directness.
The Library of Congress notes that it received immediate acclaim and became widely anthologized, while the Whitman Archive identifies it as Whitman’s most popular poem. Its enduring power comes from the simplicity with which it joins Lincoln’s national importance to the intimate sorrow of personal bereavement.
The speaker has created a Captain who is unmistakably Abraham Lincoln without ever naming him. The ship is the Union, the fearful voyage is the Civil War, the prize is victory, the port is peace, and the fallen Captain is the president, who did not live to enter that peaceful harbor.
Thus, “O Captain! My Captain!” remains Whitman’s most famous and perhaps his most immediately poignant elegy for Abraham Lincoln. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” reaches toward universal death and spiritual healing, while this poem remains deliberately close to the heartbreaking image of Lincoln lying dead upon the deck of the victorious Union.
The final paradox is therefore the poem’s deepest truth: the Captain has succeeded, but he has not survived his success. The ship has reached the harbor, but the man who guided it there is dead. The bells ring for victory while the speaker walks alone beside his fallen Captain.
Image a: Walt Whitman – Mathew Brady – Walt Whitman Archive
Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Walt Whitman’s admiration for President Lincoln is dramatized in the poet’s elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” mourning the death while celebrating the presidency of the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.
Introduction and Text of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
In Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” the speaker laments the death of President Lincoln, but he does much more than merely offer his own sad and melancholy state of mind.
This speaker creates a sacred myth through which he not only offers a tribute to the fallen president but also creates a symbolic triad that will henceforth bring readers’ and listeners’ attention to the momentous event.
The speaker also composes a “Death Carol,” in which rests the irony of elevating death from the lamentation it usually brings for a celebrated friend whom all suffering humanity can afford the fealty of welcome.
It might be observed that poet Walt Whitman sectioned his elegy into 16 parts, symbolizing the fact that Abraham Lincoln, the heroic subject of the poem, had served as the sixteenth president of the United States.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3 In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat, Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses, O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night, As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,) As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,) As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe, As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night, As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night, As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb, Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp, O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me, The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting, These and with these and the breath of my chant, I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air, With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific, In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there, With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows, And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender! O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer! You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,) Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail, And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me, The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Death Carol
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not, The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
Commentary on “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Walt Whitman was deeply affected by the assassination of President Lincoln on April 14, 1865. The poet’s admiration is dramatized in his elegy as it emphasizes three symbols: a lilac, a star, and a bird.
First Movement 1-6: Springtime when Lilacs Bloom
The speaker begins by setting the time frame in spring when lilacs bloom. He is in mourning and suggests that Americans will continue to mourn this time of year, when three events continue to come together: the lilacs bloom, the star Venus appears, and the speaker’s thoughts of the president he venerated return.
The lilacs and the star of Venus immediately become symbolic of the speaker’s feelings and the momentous event that has engendered them. In the second section of the first movement, the speaker offers a set of keening laments prefaced by “O”:
O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
Each keen grows more intense as it progresses to the final, ” O hard surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.” He picks a sprig of lilac whose leaves are heart-shaped. This act indicates that the lilac will henceforth become symbolic for the speaker; the lilac will symbolize the love the speaker bears for the fallen president.
The speaker then introduces the singing hermit thrush whose song will elevate the bird to symbolic significance for the speaker, as well as the lilacs and star. In the final two sections of the first movement, the speaker describes the landscape through which President Lincoln’s casketed body moved to its final resting place in Illinois.
Second Movement 7: The Symbolic Offering
The second movement consists of a parenthetical offering of flowers to the casketed corpse of the president but also suggests that the speaker would overlay the coffins of all the war dead with roses and lilies, “But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first.”
Again, the suggestion that the lilac will remain a symbol because it is the first flower to bloom every spring. While showering the coffins of the fallen, the speaker says he will “chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.”
Third Movement 8-9: The Star of Venus
The speaker now confronts the “western orb” that star of Venus that he had observed a month earlier. He imagines that the symbolic star had been speaking to him of the tragic events to come.
The star seemed to drop to the speaker’s side as the other stars watched. The speaker felt a sadness as the star “drops in the night, and was gone.” Now that the month has passed, the speaker feels that he was being forewarned by the symbolic star.
The speaker says that the “star of my departing comrade hold and detains me,” as he addresses the “singer bashful and tender,” that is, the hermit thrush who sings his solitary song from the covering of leaves.
Fourth Movement 10-13: A Personal Shrine to a Slain President
The speaker now muses on how he will be able to “warble . . . for the dead one there I loved.” He continues to lament but knows he must compose a “song for the large sweet soul that has gone.”
The speaker then considers what he will “hang on the chamber walls,” indicating he will erect a personal shrine to the slain president. He offers a number of items that he feels must decorate that shrine, as he catalogues them; for example, “Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes.”
The famous Whitman catalogue finds its way into several movements of this elegy. As it is the president of the country who has died, the speaker places scenes from the country in his elegy:
Lo, body and soul—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
The speaker then commands the bird to sing as he prepares to offer a “Death Carol” in the next movement.
Fifth Movement 14: A Hymn to Death
The speaker creates a moving tribute to the president by replacing the sorrow of death with the dignity and necessity of death. Death becomes a friend who gives respite to the weary body—a fact often referenced by the “Father of Yoga in the West” Paramahansa Yogananda.
The speaker prefaces his “Death Carol” with a scene of himself walking between two friends: “knowledge of death” walked on one side of the speaker, and the “thought of death” occupied the other.
The “Death Carol” virtually lovingly addresses death, inviting it to “come lovely and soothing death.” He welcomes death to “undulate round the world.” He has almost fully accepted that death comes “in the day, in the night, to all, to each, / Sooner or later.”
The speaker’s lament has transformed death from a dreaded event to a sacred, sweet one to which he will float a song full of joy.
Sixth Movement 15-16: Entwining the Images and Symbols
The speaker credits the bird with the composition of the “Death Carol.” This crediting indicates that the speaker had become so closely in tune with the warbling bird that he cognizes a hymn from the singing.
The speaker then catalogues scenes that he had actually witnessed as he traveled the battlefields of the war during which time he had nursed the wounded and dying. He saw “battle-corpses, myriads of them.”
But he finally realizes something vital to the awareness of the reality of death: “. . . I saw they were not as was thought, / They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not.” The speaker realized that it is the living who suffer the death of the deceased and not the deceased, who remained, “fully at rest.”
The speaker’s parting words offer his summation of the entwined images that now have become and will retain their symbolic significance for the speaker: “For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, / Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul.”
The deathbed edition of Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India” consists of nine parts, featuring his sprawling signature style, in which an omniscient speaker offers a colorful history of world civilization from earliest times to his own contemporary period.
Introduction and Text of “Passage to India”
The speaker in Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India” offers a marvelous drama, elucidating the many human achievements that have moved the citizens of the world from earliest times to contemporaneous civilization.
The speaker unveils the panorama of an ever-evolving world of individuals, who despite their flaws, have demonstrated their capabilities for bringing about a true “city on the hill [1],” where peace can reign and true joy can be established for every soul.
Walt Whitman’s classic poem is displayed in his wide-ranging, dramatic style, which includes his famous catalogues of people, places, events, and traditions. Into this poem, Whitman’s speaker packs the essence of world history, literature, and religion, as he sings his song of love for all peoples and all cultures that exist upon the Earth.
Passage to India
1
Singing my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the Old World the east the Suez canal, The New by its mighty railroad spann’d, The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry with thee O soul, The Past! the Past! the Past!
The Past—the dark unfathom’d retrospect! The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows! The past—the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
(As a projectile form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)
2
Passage O soul to India! Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables.
Not you alone proud truths of the world, Nor you alone ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld, Asia’s, Africa’s fables, The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; O you temples fairer than lilies pour’d over by the rising sun! O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold! Towers of fables immortal fashion’d from mortal dreams! You too I welcome and fully the same as the rest! You too with joy I sing.
Passage to India! Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spann’d, connected by network, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together.
A worship new I sing, You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, You, not for trade or transportation only, But in God’s name, and for thy sake O soul.
3
Passage to India! Lo soul for thee of tableaus twain, I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open’d, I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van, I mark from on deck the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance, I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d, The gigantic dredging machines.
In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers, I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam- whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world, I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks in grotesque shapes, the buttes, I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, I see in glimpses afar or towering immediately above me the great mountains, I see the Wind river and the Wahsatch mountains, I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest, I pass the Promontory, I ascend the Nevadas, I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind around its base, I see the Humboldt range, I thread the valley and cross the river, I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see forests of majestic pines, Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I behold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows, Marking through these and after all, in duplicate slender lines, Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, The road between Europe and Asia.
(Ah Genoese thy dream! thy dream! Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream.)
4
Passage to India! Struggles of many a captain, tales of many a sailor dead, Over my mood stealing and spreading they come, Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky.
Along all history, down the slopes, As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, A ceaseless thought, a varied train—lo, soul, to thee, thy sight, they rise, The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions; Again Vasco de Gama sails forth, Again the knowledge gain’d, the mariner’s compass, Lands found and nations born, thou born America, For purpose vast, man’s long probation fill’d, Thou rondure of the world at last accomplish’d.
5
O vast Rondure, swimming in space, Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty, Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness, Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above, Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees, With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention, Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.
Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them, Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations, With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts, With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?
Ah who shall soothe these feverish children? Who justify these restless explorations? Who speak the secret of impassive earth? Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural? What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, Cold earth, the place of graves.)
Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out, Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,) After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work, After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, Finally shall come the poet worthy that name, The true son of God shall come singing his songs.
Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d, All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told, All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together, The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified, Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet, (He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains, He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,) Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more, The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.
6
Year at whose wide-flung door I sing! Year of the purpose accomplish’d! Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans! (No mere doge of Venice now wedding the Adriatic,) I see O year in you the vast terraqueous globe given and giving all, Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World, The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland, As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.
Passage to India! Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man, The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.
Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward, The old, most populous, wealthiest of earth’s lands, The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many affluents, (I my shores of America walking to-day behold, resuming all,) The tale of Alexander on his warlike marches suddenly dying, On one side China and on the other side Persia and Arabia, To the south the great seas and the bay of Bengal, The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes, Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha, Central and southern empires and all their belongings, possessors, The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe, The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese, The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta the Moor, Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d, The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest, Thyself O soul that will not brook a challenge.
The mediaeval navigators rise before me, The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise, Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring, The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.
And who art thou sad shade? Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, With majestic limbs and pious beaming eyes, Spreading around with every look of thine a golden world, Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.
As the chief histrion, Down to the footlights walks in some great scena, Dominating the rest I see the Admiral himself, (History’s type of courage, action, faith,) Behold him sail from Palos leading his little fleet, His voyage behold, his return, his great fame, His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him a prisoner, chain’d, Behold his dejection, poverty, death.
(Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts of heroes, Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty, death? Lies the seed unreck’d for centuries in the ground? lo, to God’s due occasion, Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, And fills the earth with use and beauty.)
7
Passage indeed O soul to primal thought, Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, The young maturity of brood and bloom, To realms of budding bibles.
O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me, Thy circumnavigation of the world begin, Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return, To reason’s early paradise, Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions, Again with fair creation.
8
O we can wait no longer, We too take ship O soul, Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas, Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail, Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,) Caroling free, singing our song of God, Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.
With laugh and many a kiss, (Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,) O soul thou pleasest me, I thee.
Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God, But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.
O soul thou pleasest me, I thee, Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night, Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing, Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over, Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee, I and my soul to range in range of thee.
O Thou transcendent, Nameless, the fibre and the breath, Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them, Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving, Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir, (O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there? Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?) Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes?
Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me, And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.
Greater than stars or suns, Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth; What love than thine and ours could wider amplify? What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul? What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all? For others’ sake to suffer all?
Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d, The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done, Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d, As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found, The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.
9
Passage to more than India! Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights? O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those? Disportest thou on waters such as those? Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas? Then have thy bent unleash’d.
Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas! Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems! You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.
Passage to more than India! O secret of the earth and sky! Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land! Of you O prairies! of you gray rocks! O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows! O day and night, passage to you!
O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! Passage to you!
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
O my brave soul! O farther farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? O farther, farther, farther sail!
Commentary on “Passage to India”
Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India” undertakes the mammoth task of presenting a wide-ranging historical account of world civilization through the accomplishments of a humanity for which the poet holds deep affection and admiration. As this poet’s speaker has elsewhere deemed everything a miracle, he also deems all humanity capable of miraculous achievements.
Part 1: Present Achievements
In the opening segment of the poem, the speaker celebrates the great achievements of the present: the building of the Suez Cana [2] l, the completion of which the speaker suggests heralds the completion the mission of the world-exploring Genoese, who was seeking a water route to the Far East. The speaker then celebrates the laying of the Atlantic cable, and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
The speaker also pays tribute to the past, averring that the present is what it is because of what happened in the past. He emphasizes dependence of past experience by his repetition: “The Past! the Past! the Past!”
Part 2: Elucidating Myths and Fables
The first versagraph of Part 2 exclaims and commands his passage to India to elucidate the Asian myths and fables. He then suggests that it is not merely modern science that informs and delights the soul, but it is also myths and fables from around the entire world. He is deeply enthralled by the world religions, “The deep diving bibles and legends.”
Next, he then asserts through a rhetorical question the ancient rôle that India has played in the founding of the ways of knowing God and God’s purpose for humankind: “Passage to India! / Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?”
Then the speaker praises the adventurous spirit [3] that spans the earth and connects the peoples. He especially pays homage to all those adventurers for making their journeys not merely for material purposes but also for spiritual enlightenment.
Part 3: The Great Explorer
After having merely mentioned the opening of the Suez Canal in Part 1, the speaker celebrates in detail that opening of that Canal and then turns to the Pacific railroad, for which he marvels at its ability to tie the two coasts together.
The speaker muses on the connections being made possible inside of the United States by the Transcontinental Railroad as well as the connections being made possible with the world through the construction of the Suez Canal.
He pays homage to the discoveries of the Italian explorer, the “Genoese,” who dreamed of reaching the Far East over a less dangerous route that earlier explorers had experienced. The speaker affirms that the idea of connecting East and West has now been accomplished after having been introduced in the great past by those of great vision.
Parts 4: Many Voyages
The musing speaker can be seen following the movements of the many sea captains and sailors who appear to him like “clouds” in a storm of historical theatre. These thoughts bring scenes of the voyages, the plans, the tempest-torn struggles that ultimately resulted in the discovery of new lands where new nations would be formed.
The speaker, whose soul seems to be flooding his vision with allusions filled with scenes of all those many voyages, including that of Vasco de Gama, to the New World which resulted in his native land’s opulence.
The speaker holds the belief that all those struggling explorers were fulfilling the promise that life on Earth holds for the children living a miraculous existence. Humankind, he suggests, continues to seek out ways to keep heavenly promises.
Part 5: Earth’s Vastness
Addressing the vast planet Earth as “O vast Rondure, swimming in space,” the speaker becomes especially emotional as he considers the grand processes of people and events that have taken place on the cosmic stage.
Throughout the historical play, the first pair of human beings—Adam and Eve—appeared, followed by “their myriad progeny.” And with them the many states of human longings and craving have continued to appear, as they motivate each generation to wander, to yearn, to remain curious as they restlessly explore their surroundings.
The speaker muses on the “never-happy hearts” that continue to question as they remain baffled in a formless feverishness. These souls continue to sally forth with a “sad incessant refrain” containing the queries, “Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?” The speaker continues to wax cosmically as he marvels at the vastness of the earth and predicts that a poet will be instrumental in linking all the cultures.
Parts 6: Melding of Cultures
The speaker reveals that he sees the passage to India as the event to aid in the melding of “land, geographies,” and that passage continues to move rhythmically grasping metaphorically a “festival garland” as a couple at their wedding might do.
The speaker avers that his own soul will take a voyage to India: “Caroling free, singing our song of God, / Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.” He remains in a celebratory mood as he brings into his catalogue activities that reveal the varied cultures and long-standing traditions of the world.
Part 7: Transcending Earth
But the speaker is transcending the physical earth and insists that the destination of his journey is not merely to a geographical place called India; his journey is a mystical one. He insists that humanity is on a journey “where mariner has not yet dared to go.” He suggests that the journey is so fundamental that humanity will take up that travel even at great risk.
The speaker is metaphorically imagining that he will “farther, farther, farther sail!” And he will, of course, be doing that “sailing” through the instrumentality of imagination and intuitive understanding.
He is suggesting that he has, in fact, transcended the very idea of “passage” or travel from one earthly location to another. He is now revealing the efficacy of soul experience, which even transcends mental experience.
Part 8: Mystical Journeying
Such spiritual journeying was brilliantly depicted in the quotation [4] by Swami Sri Yukteswar in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi: “What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon.” The speaker in Walt Whitman’s wide-ranging song of journey dramatizes the heart of that great swami’s message.
The Whitman speaker understands that as great as material, physical achievements are, the more important aspect of unity between the East and the West will be achieved through soul awareness, and not merely those physical and material exchange of ideas, material goods, or political diplomacy.
Part 9: Homage to All Travelers: Geographic and Soul
While honoring those travelers who have adventurously opened up the world to others, the speaker in Whitman’s poem also pays homage to those spiritual travelers who have opened up the spiritual level of being beyond this world. This Whitman speaker is dramatizing his ideas, his musings, and his knowledge of history to bring his insights to the citizens of the world.
He likely believes that if the members of his audience can engage their own imagination in understanding the miraculous and even divine nature of the earthly experience, they will be able to range farther and further also, not only over the earth but also far beyond it.
Sources
[1] King James Bible Online. Matthew 5:14. Accessed April 1, 2025. [2] J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds. Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. (New York: Garland Publishing. 1998. Print. [3] Robin Ekiss. “Walt Whitman: ‘A Passage to India’.” Poetry Foundation. October 7, 2009. [4] Swami Sri Yukteswar in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Self-Realization Fellowship. Original publication date: 1946. This printing 2007. Print. Via Wikisource.
Image: Walt Whitman in Camden, N.J., c. 1891. (Colorised black and white print). Creator: Thomas Eakins. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Walt Whitman’s “Miracles”
In Walt Whitman’s “Miracles,” the speaker catalogues all the miracles he finds as he goes through life, concluding that he has encountered nothing but miracles.
Introduction and Text of “Miracles”
Walt Whitman’s “Miracles” consists of three versagraphs. (Please note: “Versagraph” is a term I coined; it is the conflation of “verse paragraph,” the primary unit of free verse poetry.)
The first versagraph features a long catalogue for which Whitman is noted, in which he begin his display of miracles. The second reinforces his notion that everything in creation is a miracle, and the third takes special note of the miracle of the ocean.
The poem begins and ends with a question that rhetorically, as usual, answers itself. The speaker wishes to assert and defend the idea that all aspects of creation are, in fact, miracles, not just the so-called supernatural events that are often touted as miraculous.
The speaker intuits that anything that seems supernatural is merely not yet understood. By claiming that everything from a fish to a man is a miracle, he transcends the mundane notion that divides humanity as it strives to discern what is holy and what is not.
Miracles
Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring—yet each distinct, and in its place.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?
Commentary on“Miracles”
Whitman’s speaker in “Miracle” is cataloguing all the miracles he finds as he goes through life, concluding that he has encountered nothing but miracles.
First Versagraph: The Supernatural
Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring—yet each distinct, and in its place.
The speaker begins with an exclamation, “Why!,” that implies that he has just heard someone remark about some possible supernatural event that is being touted as a miracle. He then asks the question, “who makes much of a miracle?” The question is merely rhetorical because the speaker continues to answer his own question.
The speaker avers that he is not aware that there is anything in existence that is not a miracle, and he then begins a long catalogue of things he claims are miracles. It does not matter, he asserts, “whether he is walk[ing] the streets of Manhattan or merely looking toward the sky,” all he sees are miracles.
When he wades “with bare feet along the beach and stand[s] under trees in the woods,” he perceives these acts as part of the great miracle. “Sit[ting] at table at dinner with [his] mother, seeing strangers opposite [him] riding the car, watching bees and animals feeding in the fields, or birds and insects”— all these events portend the miraculous for this speaker.
This speaker also finds miracles in the sun-down and the stars shining so quiet and bright, as well as the delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring. Whether he associates with mechanics, boatmen, farmers or the fancy people who attend the opera, he still perceives all these people to be part of the great dramatic miracle of life.
He also finds miracles in the movements of machinery and children at their sports. He admires the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman. Even sick people in hospitals, and the deceased headed for burial, he finds miraculous. When he views his own reflection in the mirror, he finds his own eyes and figure to be miracles.
The speaker finalizes his long catalogue by asserting that these things and even all those things he has not named are “one and all to me miracles.” Each miracle reflects the whole as it occupies its own space.
Second Versagraph: A Pantheistic View
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
The speaker then claims that both day and night are miracles, along with every inch of space. He emphasizes, “[e]very square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same.” From the soil, to the grass, to bodies of all men and women, he finds “[a]ll these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.”
Third Versagraph: The Miracle of the Ocean
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?
Almost as an afterthought the speaker asserts that to him the sea is a continual miracle with swimming fish, its rocks, the waves, and the ships that have men in them. The speaker concludes with his final question: “What stranger miracles are there?” Of course, the answer is, none.
Image: Walt Whitman – Library of Congress/Getty Images
Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation”
Walt Whitman served in field hospitals during the American Civil War (1861-1865), and he wrote extensively about his experience in both poems and essays. His much anthologized poem “Reconciliation” resulted from the poet’s first-hand observation of the ravages of war.
Introduction and Text of “Reconciliation”
Walt Whitman’s “Reconciliation” consists of only six sprawling lines. The lines are long and unwieldy—the third line has to be broken for almost any page. While one might contend that for such a subject, a cosmic voice is needed, Whitman has his speaker make his remarkable claims in a very personal, individual voice, revealed in the penultimate and final lines.
Far from ever professing a morose or melancholy view, Whitman was able to see in the overall scheme of things that death is an integral part of life, and he allows his speaker to profess his heartfelt observations.
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost; That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world: … For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead; I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near; I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Commentary on “Reconciliation”
What does the speaker in Whitman’s poem titled “Reconciliation” attempt to reconcile? Two concrete entities—friend and foe, and two abstract—life and death. His sprawling lines are immediately recognizable as the Whitman style that has captivated readers for many decades.
First Movement: Cosmic Claim
Word over all, beautiful as the sky! Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
“Reconciliation” makes a cosmic claim in the first line, “Word over all, beautiful as the sky.” “Word” alludes to “the Word” as it is used in the beginning of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (KJV John 1:1).
The speaker thus avers that God is “over all.” He then focuses on the limited space of humanity, claiming that something is “as beautiful as the sky.” And then he addresses his specific subject: the reconciliation of the entities he has chosen to feature. Influenced by the carnage he has witnessed, he comes to realize certain universal attributes that prevail and perplex humanity.
Despite the death and destruction that war engenders, it is a beautiful fact that eventually those evil “deeds of carnage” will disappear. The sky implies the beauty that is “the Word” (or vibration) of God, and the beauty that is lost in war will return because war “in time” loses its hold completely.
Second Movement: Death a Cleanser
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
Line three continues the claim, stating that it is also beautiful that both “Death and Night” behaving as “sisters” employ their “hands” to continue to cleanse the world’s soil repeatedly. By personifying “Death and Night” as sisters who cleanse the dirt from the world, the speaker offers further evidence of deliverance from the “deeds of carnage.”
That bad things happen on this physical plane is undeniable, but that the bad things are corrected is beautiful. “Death” gives the tired soul a respite from the torment of earth life as “night” gives rest to the body.
Third Movement: On Loving One’s Enemies
… For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead; I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near; I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
In line four, the speaker makes a startling statement: he simply affirms that his enemy is now deceased, but further he avers that this vanquished enemy is a “child of God” every bit as much as he the speaker is.
It is customarily difficult for the ordinary mind to grasp that an enemy is, like one’s self, a child of God. But Whitman’s speaker does comprehend this truth, and thus he does as Jesus the Christ commands, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (KJV Matthew 5:44).
The speaker views the dead enemy in his casket, but instead of denigrating the enemy or experiencing gladness at the man’s death as is usually expected, this speaker does the unthinkable: He “[b]end[s] down” to “touch lightly with [his] lips the white face in the coffin.” He blesses the face of the enemy by offering a consoling touch of the lips to the enemy’s pale countenance.
Sound and Meaning
Whitman’s short lyric relies on few poetic devices. Apart of the opening allusion and personification of Death and Night as sisters, the poem is fairly literal. It does employ alliteration in the same line as the personification: “the hands of the sisters . . . incessantly softly wash . . . the soil’d world.”
The many alliterative sibilant sounds enforce the meaning of the claim that the hands wash the “soil’d world.” The sounds seem to inundate the sentence as water would inundate as it cleanses.
Repetition of the “–ld” sound in “soil’d world” emphasizes the physical plane’s uncleanliness because the words are a near rime. Also, repetition of “is dead” in line four reinforces the finality that death has brought to the victim.
In Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak,” the poet has created a speaker, who is singing the praises of the true meaning of patriotism through five different voices.
Introduction and Text of “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”
Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” features a variety of voices who offer their own unique views and attitudes toward patriotism. Five distinct characters perform this little drama: poet, pennant, child, father, and banner.
This sprawling poem celebrates the American flag as an emblem of freedom, democracy, and national identity. Whitman has created a speaker who, through a dramatic exchange featuring a father, his child, and the banner itself, explores the relationship between patriotism and poetic imagination, reflecting on the struggles and aspirations of a nation seeking to fulfill its democratic promise.
Whitman’s speaker employs an expressive voice, combined with free verse, repetition, vivid imagery, and personification, which lends the poem immediacy and emotional depth. By transforming the banner into a living presence, the speaker moves beyond mere patriotic celebration to contemplate the connections among poetry, individual liberty, and national identity and destiny.
(FYI: The poem displayed here conforms to the exact placement as found in Whitman’s deathbed edition of Leave of Grass.)
Song of the Banner at Daybreak
[Poet] O a new song, a free song, Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer, By the wind’s voice and that of the drum, By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, On the ground where father and child stand, In the upward air where their eyes turn, Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.
Words! bookwords! what are you? Words no more, for hearken and see, My song is there in the open air, and I must sing, With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
I’ll weave the chord and twine in, Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life, I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz, (As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future, Crying with trumpet voice, _Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!) I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy. Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete, With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
[Pennant] Come up here, bard, bard, Come up here, soul, soul, Come up here, dear little child, To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.
[Child] Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger? And what does it say to me all the while?
[Father] Nothing my babe you see in the sky, And nothing at all to you it says–but look you my babe, Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening, And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods; These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these! How envied by all the earth.
[Poet] Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high, On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels, On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land, The great steady wind from west or west-by-south, Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea nor the red sun, I am not the wind with girlish laughter, Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes, Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death, But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land, Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings, And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Aloft there flapping and flapping.
[Child] O father it is alive–it is full of people–it has children, O now it seems to me it is talking to its children, I hear it–it talks to me–O it is wonderful! O it stretches–it spreads and runs so fast–O my father, It is so broad it covers the whole sky.
[Father] Cease, cease, my foolish babe, What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me; Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft, But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d houses.
[Banner and Pennant] Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan, To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan, Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all–and yet we know not why, For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing, Only flapping in the wind?
[Poet] I hear and see not strips of cloth alone, I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry, I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty! I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing, I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then, I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height, I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities with wealth incalculable, I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns, I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finished, I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives, I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering, I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern plantation, and again to California; Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn’d wages, See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States, (and many more to come,) See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out; Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant shaped like a sword, Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance— and now the halyards have rais’d it, Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner, Discarding peace over all the sea and land.
[Banner and Pennant] Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone, We may be terror and carnage, and are so now, Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten,) Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city, But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours, And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small, And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours, Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours— while we over all, Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles, the capitals, The forty millions of people,—O bard! in life and death supreme, We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above, Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you, This song to the soul of one poor little child.
[Child] O my father I like not the houses, They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money, But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like, That pennant I would be and must be.
[Father] Child of mine you fill me with anguish, To be that pennant would be too fearful, Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever, It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing, Forward to stand in front of wars–and O, such wars!— what have you to do with them? With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
[Banner] Demons and death then I sing, Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war, And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children, Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea, And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke, And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines, And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south, And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore, and my Western shore the same, And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi with bends and chutes, And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri, The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom, Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all, Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole, No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound, But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more, Croaking like crows here in the wind.
[Poet] My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute, I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded, My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand, Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner! Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them, You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money, May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast;) O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships, Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues–but you as henceforth I see you, Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars,) Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun, measuring the sky, (Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child, While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;) O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious, Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me, So loved–O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night! Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all— (absolute owner of all)—O banner and pennant! I too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing–houses, machines are nothing–I see them not, I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only, Flapping up there in the wind.
Commentary on “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”
In Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak,” the speakers stage a dramatic conversation, which elevates the flag as a living symbol of national purpose amid the call of war.
Poet: “O A new song, a free song”
Upon observing the flag and pennant of his country and the military, the poet wishes to make the ultimate statement about the meaning of patriotism. With all of the voices who may express a thought, the poet will attempt to “twine them in” and give life to them.
Pennant: “Come up here, bard, bard”
The pennant representing the military invites the poet and the others to join him as he flies high in the sky and “play[s] with the measureless light.”
Child: “Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?”
The child is thrilled by the invitation of the pennant but does not quite understand what it is or what it means; thus, he asks his father what it is that is so inviting to him.
Father: “Nothing my babe you see in the sky”
The father typically tries to avert the child’s attention from the military pennant’s allure and points that attention to other areas of life. The father points out that there are houses and money and cars loaded with goods to be dealt with.
His implications are that the land is rich with material wealth with he would like his child to become engaged with instead of having to serve in the military to protect these things.
Poet: “Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high”
Here the poet again interjects his beautiful words: “But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings.” And in addition to some lovely landscape description, the poet adds, “And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, / Aloft there flapping and flapping.”
Child: “O father it is alive—it is full of people–it has children”
The child, despite the father’s attempt to redirect his attention, becomes even more
enthralled by the pennant; in it, the child sees people, especially children: “It is talking to children / I hear it–it talks to me.”
Father: “Cease, cease, my foolish babe”
Again, the father seeks to dissuade the child from noting the pennant and directs the child’s attention to things on the ground.
Banner and Pennant: “Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan”
Now the flag and the pennant both appeal to the poet to talk to the children and help
them understand that the banner and pennant are more then mere strips of cloth.
Poet: “I hear and see not strips of cloth alone”
The poet avers that the banner and pennant are not merely strips of cloth: “I hear and see not strips of cloth alone, / I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry, / I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!”
The banner and pennant, however, feel that poet needs to be even more emphatic: “Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! / No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone.”
Child: “O my father I like not the houses”
The child then tells his father that he is not interested in the material things of this world; he prefers to work for higher ideals as symbolized by the pennant and banner.
Father: “Child of mine you fill me with anguish”
Naturally, the father fears for the child as any father would fear for a son or daughter who joins the military service. As the child seeks to perform duties that honor his country, the father only sees the possibility of the child fighting and dying in war.
Banner: “Demons and death then I sing”
The banner then admits that duty is filled with “demons and death,” but the banner nevertheless insists that it will sing these things. It then catalogues the guts and glory that is represents and is unashamed of the work it symbolizes.
Poet: “My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last”
The poet is finally emboldened to sing the praises of the banner and pennant, claiming, “a little child taught me.” The poet now thinks only of the heightened duty symbolized by the pennant and banner, not of the material wealth accumulated by a free people. The key focus is on the freedom, without which the material wealth would remain an unachieved desire.
Walt Whitman’s seven-line poem titled “Cavalry Crossing a Ford” offers a simple, single unified image, much as a photograph of the same scene would offer.
Introduction and Text of “Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
This signature sprawling poem “Cavalry Crossing a Ford” is one of Whitman’s most widely anthologized poems from his Civil War experience; it first appeared in the section “Drum-Taps,” in 1865 in his much revised Leaves of Grass, his collection that he continually added to and revised for many years.
The speaker of this poem adds no commentary about what he sees; he simply reports the image as it appears to his sight. Each line becomes a single unit that gives its supporting value to the entire poem.
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford—while,
Scarlet and blue and snowy white, The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.
Commentary on “Cavalry Crossing a Ford”
This seven-line poem offers a simple, single unified image, much as a photograph of the same scene would do.
Line 1: ”A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands”
The speaker is riding with a line of cavalry soldiers as they move into battle. The small group of soldiers is in the process of crossing a river, as the speaker commences his portrayal of this event. The attention of the viewer is directed to a line of the cavalrymen who are on horseback, “wind[ing] betwixt green islands.”
Whitman eschewed any traditional riming scheme with this poem; however, the assonance of words with such as “wind,” “island,” and “line,” offer a stand-in and function as rime would do in helping to render the line a unified whole. The viewer can see the whole group of cavalry in just the first line.
Line 2: ”They take a serpentine course— their arms flash in the sun–Hark to the musical clank”
The line of soldiers seems to form a snake-like line as it glides through the landscape. Crossing the river the “serpentine” line appears to move as the snake would move through grass.
The speaker now refers to the soldiers by reporting that, “their arms [are] flash[ing] in the sun.” The speaker then adds to his description a sound: “Hark to the musical clank.” The poem, therefore, is offering an image that a snapshot could never do.
Line 3: ”Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink”
The speaker now dramatizes the river, reporting that it is “silvery” with the horses “splashing” the water, taking a gulp of the water every time they halt to wait their turn to trot ahead. The speaker adds a marvelous touch by commanding his reader/listerner/viewer: “Behold the silvery river.”
Line 4: ”Behold the brown-faced men–each group, each person, a picture—the negligent rest on the saddles”
Employing this line and the following line to dramatize the soldiers, the speaker again commands his listeners to look at the “brown-faced men.” The speaker then asserts that each soldier represents a “picture,” as the whole group of soldiers also paints its own picture. He notes that some seem rather laid-back and seem to be merely relaxing in their saddles before they begin their difficult journey again.
Line 5: ”Some emerge on the opposite bank–others are just entering the ford—while”
The speaker then claims that a section of the line of soldiers is completing their crossing of the river, as others remain in the process of stepping into the river. The line connects immediately to the following line employing the subordinating conjunction “while,” giving the section obvious dependence on the following line.
Line 6: ”Scarlet, and blue, and snowy white”
The flags representing the colors of the united country, the union flag, which serve as a guidon for the group remain in a single line to stress their important function of representing the country they are fighting to preserve.
Line 6: ”The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind”
The final line finds the speaker stressing the colorful flags, “flutter[ing] gaily.” The speaker finds that fluttering a happy event as the flags do what they would simply and naturally do in a light breeze.
Image a: Walt Whitman – Mathew Brady – Walt Whitman Archive
Walt Whitman’s “Patroling Barnegat”
Walt Whitman’s American-Innovative sonnet demonstrates the power of the verb form known as the present participle, as his speaker dramatizes the activity of a severe storm at sea.
Introduction and Text of “Patroling Barnegat”
Walt Whitman’s “Patroling Barnegat” is an American-Innovative sonnet, a form which makes various transformations based upon the received sonnets from the past, particularly the Shakespearean (Elizabethan or English and Petrarchan (Italian) forms.
Unlike the English and Italian sonnet forms, the American-Innovative sonnet almost always features a much looser form. While the English sonnet is sectioned into three quatrains and a couplet and the Italian is sectioned into octave and sestet, the American-Innovative sonnets are often subdivided into “movements,” when it appears in its purest form.
The American-Innovative may, indeed, take the traditional form and section into quatrains and octaves, but as it does so, those stanzas are usually vastly altered from the traditional forms. Of course, the American-Innovative form usually dispenses with rime and meter, but again if it employs those devices, it does so in new and different ways.
These sonnet movements depend solely on the sonnet’s total environment. While some American-Innovative sonnets may move in ways similar to the English and Italian, they never feature the entire body of the early sonnet forms.
Walt Whitman’s American-Innovative sonnet moves on present participles: “running,” “muttering,” “pealing,” etc. The speaker is observing a wildly active situation, and in order to convey the activity, he keeps his descriptions moving through a piling on of the present participle verb forms.
Patroling Barnegat
Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing, (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering, A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting, That savage trinity warily watching.
Commentary on “Patroling Barnegat”
This American-Innovative sonnet “Patroling Barnegat” demonstrates the power of the verb form known as the present participle. The speaker is dramatizing the turbulence of a severe storm on the ocean.
First Movement: Setting the Scene
Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running, Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
The first movement of Walt Whitman’s “Patroling Barnegat” includes the poem’s introductory element of depicting the subject by creating the image of the sea wildly churning its wave into a “wild” storm, as the ocean waters are “running” high. The speaker is dramatizing the event of patroling the stormy waters of Barnegat Bay, off the coast of New Jersey.
The speaker emphasizes the severity of the storm by repeating the word “wild.” He shows the sea being whipped up in a frenzy which causes a “roar of the gale,” while a background noise creates an “incessant undertone” that seems to be “muttering.”
The noises bedevil the speaker; thus he calls them “shouts of demoniac laughter.” These sounds seem to pierce to speaker’s ears. He then invokes a “trinity” of “waves, air, midnight,” calling them the “savagest” that lash the sea vessel and the men who are manning it.
Second Movement: Drama of the Waves
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
The second movement includes the drama of the waves as they appear “out of the shadows”; he calls them “milk-white combs” as they come “careering.” He then observes that over the “beachy slush” there are “sand spirts of snow” that come in “slanting” as they move inland.
The storm creates a murkiness through which “the easterly death-wind” comes “breasting.” As the patrol-boat plunges through the storm and snow-filled air, it seems to be “cutting” its way through as the men remain vigilant.
Third Movement: Two Questions
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
The third movement, which consists of a single parenthetical line, dissects the sonnet to pose two questions regarding the sighting of a possible disaster. The speaker excitedly points to something he thinks my might be seeing in the distance. He seems to be asking someone if he is actually seeing something. His question includes the possibility that a wreck may have occurred.
And if there is something there, he then wonders if it may, in fact, be a wreck. Thus, he queries if there may be a “red signal” being sent out. The very purpose of this patrol in this storm is to search for people who might be in trouble on the sea as it whips up possible disasters.
The parenthetical questions are never answered. It seems to appear as a simple incidental thought, as the speaker continues to concentrate upon describing the storm and how it affects the water and the beach. The sounds of the water and winds become important for his description.
Fourth Movement: A Drama of Tension
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering, A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting, That savage trinity warily watching.
The final movement consists of the final five lines that dramatize the tension between the beach of “slush and sand” and that savage trinity of “waves, air, and midnight.” The patrol has lasted all night and finally at the “midnight edge” still “those milk-white combs” continue “careering.”
The speaker concludes by invoking the image of “a group of dim, weird forms” that persists in flailing about in the night as the “savage trinity” continues to watch.
Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
Walt Whitman’s sprawling eight-line poem showcases the poet’s freewheeling style while dramatizing the wildly romantic world view portrayed in almost all of his poems.
Introduction and Text “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” provides a study in contrasts between science and poetry. The speaker makes his preference known that he favors looking at the stars over studying them. The speaker is a transcendentalist-romantic individual who is more interested in the life of the senses than the life of the mind.
Interestingly, however, this speaker demonstrates that, in certain instances, the senses can lead to a more spiritual experience than the mind. The speaker prefers to indulge his fancy rather than pay attention to the measured distances between heavenly bodies.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Reading:
Commentary on ““When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
Walt Whitman’s sprawling eight-line poem showcases the poet’s freewheeling style while dramatizing the wildly romantic world view portrayed in almost all of his poems.
First Movement: When vs After
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room
The first movement of Whitman’s influential poem consists of four adverbial clauses beginning with “when”:
1. when he listened to the lecture, 2. when the numbers were presented, 3. when “the charts and the diagrams” were shown, 4. when he heard the audience’s cheer the “learn’d astronomer.”
A fascinating riddle poses the question: “When the man jumped off the building, where was he?”
Possible answers: —Until he hit the ground, he was in the air— What’s wrong with that answer? That was “after” he jumped.
Then the person riddled might respond: —still standing on the top of the building— Wrong because, that was “before” he jumped.
This riddle is instructive for language use especially use in poetry. The adverb “when” is a flabby word, causing the ambiguity of unclarity as associated with an action. Thus if possible, one needs to consider whether the action occurred “before” or “after” the first event.
Whitman was such an astute observer of both events and language, but this poem could use one last revision changing the “when” clauses to “after” clauses because that is the accurate time frames for each of the actions that he mentions.
The reader will note that is was, actually, “after” all the following that he became “tired and sick” and determined to get up and leave:
1. after he had heard the scientist 2. after he had seen the stats and numbers 3. after he had been presented the charts 4. after he had heard the other audience members applauding the astronomer.
Second Movement: After Growing Sick and Tired
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
After the speaker had listened to a portion of the lecture, he gets up and leaves the lecture hall, goes out into the refreshing night air and looks up at the stars. The event is simple, but the speaker’s dramatic portrayal of his actions enhances the act and makes it so much more interesting and meaningful than the mere event.
For example, the use of the word “unaccountable” contrasts with all the counting that was going on by the lecturer. The speaker is simply remarking that he grew “tired and sick” while listening, but he does not know why.
The speaker seems to have no reason for this reaction. He is cleverly leaving that reasoning up the reader to discern, after he paints his portrait of natural beauty in the final three lines, in which reports that he rose from his seat, moved out into the night alone, and then off and on gazed upward to the heavens where he was treated to the “perfect silence at the stars.”
Those final lines contrast the stuffy lecture hall with the lushness of the great outdoors; they contrast the enjoyment of being alone as opposed to being surrounded by people in the stuffy lecture hall. The night air is “mystical”—the speaker is carried to a transcendental height by the simple “moist night-air.”
And the best of all the observant speaker saves for the last; in contrast to the steady pace of the lecture, he leisurely “from time to time”—no hurry, no schedule, no following someone else’s line of thought—gazes up into the heavens and observes the brilliance of the stars themselves, instead of merely hearing about them through charts, diagrams, and numbers.
