The following video offers a discussion of Whitman’s perspectives, style, and themes. Please understand that there are many possible interpretations and many different ways to analyze Whitman’s poetry.

Comments on Reading Whitman

As you read Whitman, you will see and hear the differences which separate his poetry from the poetry of his time (like that of Longfellow or Whittier), and you will hear the similarities of theme in devotion to the concepts of freedom and equality: Poets “are the voice and exposition of liberty,” Whitman tells us (1938), and “Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man.” Whitman’s work is often best understood by reading it out loud so the dramatic and oratorical quality that provides the poem’s energy can be fully appreciated. You will note that the focus and clear narrative that provide structure for others’ poetry are not as apparent in Whitman’s work; his work has a looser, perhaps more organic form.

As you read, pay attention to the narrative voice in the poems, and ask yourself, “Who’s speaking here?” Remember that the writer of the poem is not the same as the narrative voice of the poem (in fact, the two may be quite different). The writer creates a narrative voice to “speak” the poem. The narrative voice in “Song of Myself” is astonishing. As you consider this, also think about the relationship this narrative voice (or persona) establishes with you, the reader. Who can confidently say, “What I assume, you shall assume,” and “I might not tell everyone but I will tell you,” and “Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you?” The assured quality of these lines reflects a particularly personal relationship that transcends time and place.

Leaves of Grass – Excerpts (1855)

  One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
  Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

  Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
  Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say
      the Form complete is worthier far,
  The Female equally with the Male I sing.

  Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
  Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
  The Modern Man I sing.

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.

Still Though the One I Sing

Still though the one I sing,
  (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,
  I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O
      quenchless, indispensable fire!)

To the States

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
      much, obey little,
  Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
  Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
      afterward resumes its liberty.

On Journeys Through the States

  On journeys through the States we start,
  (Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
  Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
  We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.

  We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,
  And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the
      seasons, and effuse as much?

  We dwell a while in every city and town,
  We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the
      Mississippi, and the Southern States,
  We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
  We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,
  We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the
      body and the soul,
  Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,
  And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
  And may be just as much as the seasons.

 Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
  I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
  I will make divine magnetic lands,
       With the love of comrades,
         With the life-long love of comrades.

  I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
      and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
  I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
       By the love of comrades,
         By the manly love of comrades.

  For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
  For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

Starting from Paumanok

 1.

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born,
Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements;
Dweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my city,--or on southern savannas;
Or a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in
        California;
Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the
        spring;
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;
Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri--aware of mighty
        Niagara
Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains--the hirsute and strong-
        breasted bull;
Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow, my
        amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the
        swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.


2.

Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches,
        mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

How curious! how real!
Under foot the divine soil--over head the sun.

See, revolving, the globe;
The ancestor-continents, away, grouped together;
The present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus
        between.

See, vast trackless spaces;
As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;
Countless masses debouch upon them;
They are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

See, projected through time,
For me an audience interminable.

With firm and regular step they wend--they never stop,
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;
One generation playing its part, and passing on,
Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn,
With faces turned sideways or backward towards me, to listen,
With eyes retrospective towards me.


3.

Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;
Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a programme of chants.

Chants of the prairies;
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican Sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota;
Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equidistant,
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.


4.

In the Year 80 of the States,[3]
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents
        the same,
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.)

I harbour, for good or bad--I permit to speak, at every hazard--
Nature now without check, with original energy.


5.

Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
Surround them, East and West! for they would surround you;
And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly
        with you.

I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!

In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?
Why, these are the children of the antique, to justify it.


6.

Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted
        hither:
I have perused it--own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)
Think nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than it
        deserves;
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my place, with my own day, here.

Here lands female and male;
Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world--here the flame of
        materials;
Here spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,
Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.


7.

The SOUL!
For ever and for ever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
        water ebbs and flows.

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most
        spiritual poems;
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of
        immortality.

I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any
        circumstances be subjected to another State;
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night
        between all the States, and between any two of them;
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with
        menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:
And a song make I, of the One formed out of all;
The fanged and glittering one whose head is over all;
Resolute, warlike one, including and over all;
However high the head of any else, that head is over all.

I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every
        city large and small;
And employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon
        land and sea--And I will report all heroism from an American point
        of view;
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me--for I am determined
        to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.

I will sing the song of companionship;
I will show what alone must finally compact these;
I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it
        in me;
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening
        to consume me;
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;
I will give them complete abandonment;
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love;
For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?


8.

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I advance from the people _en masse_ in their own spirit;
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I make the poem of evil also--I commemorate that part also;
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--And I say there is
        in fact no evil,
Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to
        me, as anything else.

I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion--I too
        go to the wars;
It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner's
        pealing shouts;
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.

Each is not for its own sake;
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's
        sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;
None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the
        future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their
        religion;
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;
Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;
Nor land, nor man or woman, without religion.


9.

What are you doing, young man?
Are you so earnest--so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?

It is well--Against such I say not a word--I am their poet also;
But behold! such swiftly subside--burnt up for religion's sake;
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of
        the earth,
Any more than such are to religion.


10.

What do you seek, so pensive and silent?
What do you need, Camerado?
Dear son! do you think it is love?

Listen, dear son--listen, America, daughter or son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess--and yet it
        satisfies--it is great;
But there is something else very great--it makes the whole coincide;
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and
        provides for all.


11.

Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,
The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.

My comrade!
For you, to share with me, two greatnesses--and a third one, rising
        inclusive and more resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion.

Mélange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;
Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we know
        not of;
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;
These selecting--these, in hints, demanded of me.

Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,
And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O warblings under the sun--ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither,
I take to your reckless and composite chords--I add to them, and cheerfully
        pass them forward.


12.

As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the
        briars, hatching her brood.
I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully
        singing.

And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not
        there only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.


13.

Democracy!
Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.
Ma femme!
For the brood beyond us and of us,
For those who belong here, and those to come,
I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and
        haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way,
And your songs, outlawed offenders--for I scan you with kindred eyes, and
        carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,--
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and
        is not dropped by death.

I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all--and I will be the bard
        of personality;
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the
        other;
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present--and can be
        none in the future;
And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned to
beautiful results--and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful
        than death;
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
        compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as
        profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts;
But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with
        reference to ensemble:
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all
        days;
And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference
        to the soul;
Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no
        one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul.


14.

Was somebody asking to see the Soul?
See! your own shape and countenance--persons, substances, beasts, the
        trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real body ever die, and be buried?

Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,
Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to
        fitting spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of
        death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning,
        the main concern,
Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life,
        return in the body and the soul,
Indifferently before death and after death.

Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern--and
        includes and is the soul;
Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.


15.

Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.

Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
Live words--words to the lands.
O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and
        grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those
        sweet-aired interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west
        Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and
        Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!
The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the
        inexperienced sisters!
Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the
        compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate
include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you--not from one, any sooner than another!

O Death! O!--for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with
        irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's
        sands,
Crossing the prairies--dwelling again in Chicago--dwelling in every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States, as during life[4]--each man and woman my
        neighbour,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me--and I yet with any of them;
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river--yet in my house of adobie,
Yet returning eastward--yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,
Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter--the snow and ice welcome to me,
        or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;
Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the
        Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same--yet welcoming every new
        brother;
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with
        the old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal--coming
        personally to you now;
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.


16.

With me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on.
For your life, adhere to me;
Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;
I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to
        you--but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
No dainty _dolce affettuoso_ I;
Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.


17.

On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft--still the Future of the States I harbinge,
        glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines!
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and
        animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names;
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta,
Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla;
Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and
        the land with names.


18.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;
A world primal again--vistas of glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These my voice announcing--I will sleep no more, but arise;
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless,
stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.


19.

See! steamers steaming through my poems!
See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing;
See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the
        maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village;
See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how
        they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores;
See pastures and forests in my poems--See animals, wild and tame--See,
        beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short
        curly grass;
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with
        iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce;
See the many-cylindered steam printing-press--See the electric telegraph,
        stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan;
See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching--pulses
        of Europe, duly returned;
See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the
        steam-whistle;
See ploughmen, ploughing farms--See miners, digging mines--See the
        numberless factories;
See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools--See, from among them,
        superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working
        dresses;
See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved,
        close-held by day and night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.


20.

O Camerado close!
O you and me at last--and us two only.
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph--and you shall also;
O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!
O to haste, firm holding--to haste, haste on, with me.