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.<\/p>\r\n
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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
One\u2019s-self I sing, a simple separate person,\r\n Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.\r\n\r\n Of physiology from top to toe I sing,\r\n Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say\r\n the Form complete is worthier far,\r\n The Female equally with the Male I sing.\r\n\r\n Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,\r\n Cheerful, for freest action form\u2019d under the laws divine,\r\n The Modern Man I sing.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\nI Hear America Singing<\/h3>\r\n
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,\r\n Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,\r\n The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,\r\n The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,\r\n The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand\r\n singing on the steamboat deck,\r\n The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as\r\n he stands,\r\n The wood-cutter\u2019s song, the ploughboy\u2019s on his way in the morning,\r\n or at noon intermission or at sundown,\r\n The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,\r\n or of the girl sewing or washing,\r\n Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,\r\n The day what belongs to the day\u2014at night the party of young\r\n fellows, robust, friendly,\r\n Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\nStill Though the One I Sing<\/h3>\r\n
Still though the one I sing,\r\n (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,\r\n I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O\r\n quenchless, indispensable fire!)\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\nTo the States<\/h3>\r\n
To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist\r\n much, obey little,\r\n Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,\r\n Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever\r\n afterward resumes its liberty.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\nOn Journeys Through the States<\/h3>\r\n
On journeys through the States we start,\r\n (Ay through the world, urged by these songs,\r\n Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)\r\n We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.\r\n\r\n We have watch\u2019d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,\r\n And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the\r\n seasons, and effuse as much?\r\n\r\n We dwell a while in every city and town,\r\n We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the\r\n Mississippi, and the Southern States,\r\n We confer on equal terms with each of the States,\r\n We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,\r\n We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the\r\n body and the soul,\r\n Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,\r\n And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,\r\n And may be just as much as the seasons.<\/pre>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/pre>\r\n\r\nFor You, O Democracy<\/h3>\r\n
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,\r\n I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,\r\n I will make divine magnetic lands,\r\n With the love of comrades,\r\n With the life-long love of comrades.\r\n\r\n I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,\r\n and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,\r\n I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other\u2019s necks,\r\n By the love of comrades,\r\n By the manly love of comrades.\r\n\r\n For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!\r\n For you, for you I am trilling these songs.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\n<\/div>\r\nStarting from Paumanok<\/h3>\r\n
1.\r\n\r\nStarting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born,\r\nWell-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother;\r\nAfter roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements;\r\nDweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my city,--or on southern savannas;\r\nOr a soldier camped, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in\r\n California;\r\nOr rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the\r\n spring;\r\nOr withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,\r\nFar from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;\r\nAware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri--aware of mighty\r\n Niagara\r\nAware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains--the hirsute and strong-\r\n breasted bull;\r\nOf earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced--stars, rain, snow, my\r\n amaze;\r\nHaving studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's,\r\nAnd heard at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the\r\n swamp-cedars,\r\nSolitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.\r\n\r\n\r\n2.\r\n\r\nVictory, union, faith, identity, time,\r\nYourself, the present and future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches,\r\n mystery,\r\nEternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.\r\n\r\nThis, then, is life;\r\nHere is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.\r\n\r\nHow curious! how real!\r\nUnder foot the divine soil--over head the sun.\r\n\r\nSee, revolving, the globe;\r\nThe ancestor-continents, away, grouped together;\r\nThe present and future continents, north and south, with the isthmus\r\n between.\r\n\r\nSee, vast trackless spaces;\r\nAs in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;\r\nCountless masses debouch upon them;\r\nThey are now covered with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.\r\n\r\nSee, projected through time,\r\nFor me an audience interminable.\r\n\r\nWith firm and regular step they wend--they never stop,\r\nSuccessions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;\r\nOne generation playing its part, and passing on,\r\nAnother generation playing its part, and passing on in its turn,\r\nWith faces turned sideways or backward towards me, to listen,\r\nWith eyes retrospective towards me.\r\n\r\n\r\n3.\r\n\r\nAmericanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;\r\nForemost! century marches! Libertad! masses!\r\nFor you a programme of chants.\r\n\r\nChants of the prairies;\r\nChants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican Sea;\r\nChants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota;\r\nChants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and thence, equidistant,\r\nShooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.\r\n\r\n\r\n4.\r\n\r\nIn the Year 80 of the States,[3]\r\nMy tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,\r\nBorn here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents\r\n the same,\r\nI, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,\r\nHoping to cease not till death.\r\n\r\nCreeds and schools in abeyance,\r\n(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten.)\r\n\r\nI harbour, for good or bad--I permit to speak, at every hazard--\r\nNature now without check, with original energy.\r\n\r\n\r\n5.\r\n\r\nTake my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!\r\nMake welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;\r\nSurround them, East and West! for they would surround you;\r\nAnd you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly\r\n with you.\r\n\r\nI conned old times;\r\nI sat studying at the feet of the great masters:\r\nNow, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!\r\n\r\nIn the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?\r\nWhy, these are the children of the antique, to justify it.\r\n\r\n\r\n6.\r\n\r\nDead poets, philosophs, priests,\r\nMartyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,\r\nLanguage-shapers on other shores,\r\nNations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,\r\nI dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted\r\n hither:\r\nI have perused it--own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)\r\nThink nothing can ever be greater--nothing can ever deserve more than it\r\n deserves;\r\nRegarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,\r\nI stand in my place, with my own day, here.\r\n\r\nHere lands female and male;\r\nHere the heirship and heiress-ship of the world--here the flame of\r\n materials;\r\nHere spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,\r\nThe ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;\r\nThe satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,\r\nYes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.\r\n\r\n\r\n7.\r\n\r\nThe SOUL!\r\nFor ever and for ever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than\r\n water ebbs and flows.\r\n\r\nI will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most\r\n spiritual poems;\r\nAnd I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,\r\nFor I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of\r\n immortality.\r\n\r\nI will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any\r\n circumstances be subjected to another State;\r\nAnd I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night\r\n between all the States, and between any two of them;\r\nAnd I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with\r\n menacing points,\r\nAnd behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:\r\nAnd a song make I, of the One formed out of all;\r\nThe fanged and glittering one whose head is over all;\r\nResolute, warlike one, including and over all;\r\nHowever high the head of any else, that head is over all.\r\n\r\nI will acknowledge contemporary lands;\r\nI will trail the whole geography of the globe, and salute courteously every\r\n city large and small;\r\nAnd employments! I will put in my poems, that with you is heroism, upon\r\n land and sea--And I will report all heroism from an American point\r\n of view;\r\nAnd sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me--for I am determined\r\n to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.\r\n\r\nI will sing the song of companionship;\r\nI will show what alone must finally compact these;\r\nI believe These are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it\r\n in me;\r\nI will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening\r\n to consume me;\r\nI will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires;\r\nI will give them complete abandonment;\r\nI will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love;\r\nFor who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy?\r\nAnd who but I should be the poet of comrades?\r\n\r\n\r\n8.\r\n\r\nI am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;\r\nI advance from the people _en masse_ in their own spirit;\r\nHere is what sings unrestricted faith.\r\nOmnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;\r\nI make the poem of evil also--I commemorate that part also;\r\nI am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is--And I say there is\r\n in fact no evil,\r\nOr if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land, or to\r\n me, as anything else.\r\n\r\nI too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion--I too\r\n go to the wars;\r\nIt may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries thereof, the winner's\r\n pealing shouts;\r\nWho knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.\r\n\r\nEach is not for its own sake;\r\nI say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's\r\n sake.\r\n\r\nI say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;\r\nNone has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;\r\nNone has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the\r\n future is.\r\n\r\nI say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their\r\n religion;\r\nOtherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;\r\nNor character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;\r\nNor land, nor man or woman, without religion.\r\n\r\n\r\n9.\r\n\r\nWhat are you doing, young man?\r\nAre you so earnest--so given up to literature, science, art, amours?\r\nThese ostensible realities, politics, points?\r\nYour ambition or business, whatever it may be?\r\n\r\nIt is well--Against such I say not a word--I am their poet also;\r\nBut behold! such swiftly subside--burnt up for religion's sake;\r\nFor not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of\r\n the earth,\r\nAny more than such are to religion.\r\n\r\n\r\n10.\r\n\r\nWhat do you seek, so pensive and silent?\r\nWhat do you need, Camerado?\r\nDear son! do you think it is love?\r\n\r\nListen, dear son--listen, America, daughter or son!\r\nIt is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess--and yet it\r\n satisfies--it is great;\r\nBut there is something else very great--it makes the whole coincide;\r\nIt, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and\r\n provides for all.\r\n\r\n\r\n11.\r\n\r\nKnow you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,\r\nThe following chants, each for its kind, I sing.\r\n\r\nMy comrade!\r\nFor you, to share with me, two greatnesses--and a third one, rising\r\n inclusive and more resplendent,\r\nThe greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion.\r\n\r\nM\u00e9lange mine own! the unseen and the seen;\r\nMysterious ocean where the streams empty;\r\nProphetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me;\r\nLiving beings, identities, now doubtless near us in the air, that we know\r\n not of;\r\nContact daily and hourly that will not release me;\r\nThese selecting--these, in hints, demanded of me.\r\n\r\nNot he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me\r\nHas winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,\r\nAny more than I am held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,\r\nAnd to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,\r\nAfter what they have done to me, suggesting themes.\r\n\r\nO such themes! Equalities!\r\nO amazement of things! O divine average!\r\nO warblings under the sun--ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting!\r\nO strain, musical, flowing through ages--now reaching hither,\r\nI take to your reckless and composite chords--I add to them, and cheerfully\r\n pass them forward.\r\n\r\n\r\n12.\r\n\r\nAs I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,\r\nI have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the\r\n briars, hatching her brood.\r\nI have seen the he-bird also;\r\nI have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully\r\n singing.\r\n\r\nAnd while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not\r\n there only,\r\nNor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes;\r\nBut subtle, clandestine, away beyond,\r\nA charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.\r\n\r\n\r\n13.\r\n\r\nDemocracy!\r\nNear at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.\r\nMa femme!\r\nFor the brood beyond us and of us,\r\nFor those who belong here, and those to come,\r\nI, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out carols stronger and\r\n haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.\r\n\r\nI will make the songs of passion, to give them their way,\r\nAnd your songs, outlawed offenders--for I scan you with kindred eyes, and\r\n carry you with me the same as any.\r\n\r\nI will make the true poem of riches,--\r\nTo earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and\r\n is not dropped by death.\r\n\r\nI will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all--and I will be the bard\r\n of personality;\r\nAnd I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the\r\n other;\r\nAnd I will show that there is no imperfection in the present--and can be\r\n none in the future;\r\nAnd I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it may be turned to\r\nbeautiful results--and I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful\r\n than death;\r\nAnd I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are\r\n compact,\r\nAnd that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as\r\n profound as any.\r\n\r\nI will not make poems with reference to parts;\r\nBut I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with\r\n reference to ensemble:\r\nAnd I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all\r\n days;\r\nAnd I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference\r\n to the soul;\r\nBecause, having looked at the objects of the universe, I find there is no\r\n one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul.\r\n\r\n\r\n14.\r\n\r\nWas somebody asking to see the Soul?\r\nSee! your own shape and countenance--persons, substances, beasts, the\r\n trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.\r\n\r\nAll hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:\r\nHow can the real body ever die, and be buried?\r\n\r\nOf your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,\r\nItem for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to\r\n fitting spheres,\r\nCarrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of\r\n death.\r\n\r\nNot the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning,\r\n the main concern,\r\nAny more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's substance and life,\r\n return in the body and the soul,\r\nIndifferently before death and after death.\r\n\r\nBehold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern--and\r\n includes and is the soul;\r\nWhoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.\r\n\r\n\r\n15.\r\n\r\nWhoever you are! to you endless announcements.\r\n\r\nDaughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?\r\nDid you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?\r\n\r\nToward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,\r\nLive words--words to the lands.\r\nO the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!\r\nLand of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton, sugar, rice!\r\nLand of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp! Land of the apple and\r\n grape!\r\nLand of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those\r\n sweet-aired interminable plateaus!\r\nLand of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!\r\nLands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west\r\n Colorado winds!\r\nLand of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!\r\nLand of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!\r\nLand of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and\r\n Connecticut!\r\nLand of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!\r\nLand of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!\r\nInextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate ones!\r\nThe side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limbed!\r\nThe great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the\r\n inexperienced sisters!\r\nFar-breathed land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the\r\n compact!\r\nThe Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!\r\nO all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate\r\ninclude you all with perfect love!\r\nI cannot be discharged from you--not from one, any sooner than another!\r\n\r\nO Death! O!--for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with\r\n irrepressible love,\r\nWalking New England, a friend, a traveller,\r\nSplashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's\r\n sands,\r\nCrossing the prairies--dwelling again in Chicago--dwelling in every town,\r\nObserving shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,\r\nListening to the orators and the oratresses in public halls,\r\nOf and through the States, as during life[4]--each man and woman my\r\n neighbour,\r\nThe Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,\r\nThe Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me--and I yet with any of them;\r\nYet upon the plains west of the spinal river--yet in my house of adobie,\r\nYet returning eastward--yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,\r\nYet Canadian cheerily braving the winter--the snow and ice welcome to me,\r\n or mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;\r\nYet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the\r\n Narragansett Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]\r\nYet sailing to other shores to annex the same--yet welcoming every new\r\n brother;\r\nHereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with\r\n the old ones;\r\nComing among the new ones myself, to be their companion and equal--coming\r\n personally to you now;\r\nEnjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.\r\n\r\n\r\n16.\r\n\r\nWith me, with firm holding--yet haste, haste on.\r\nFor your life, adhere to me;\r\nOf all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and toughen you;\r\nI may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself to\r\n you--but what of that?\r\n\r\nMust not Nature be persuaded many times?\r\nNo dainty _dolce affettuoso_ I;\r\nBearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived,\r\nTo be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;\r\nFor such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.\r\n\r\n\r\n17.\r\n\r\nOn my way a moment I pause;\r\nHere for you! and here for America!\r\nStill the Present I raise aloft--still the Future of the States I harbinge,\r\n glad and sublime;\r\nAnd for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.\r\n\r\nThe red aborigines!\r\nLeaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and\r\n animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names;\r\nOkonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta,\r\nOronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla;\r\nLeaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and\r\n the land with names.\r\n\r\n\r\n18.\r\n\r\nO expanding and swift! O henceforth,\r\nElements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;\r\nA world primal again--vistas of glory, incessant and branching;\r\nA new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far, with new contests,\r\nNew politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.\r\n\r\nThese my voice announcing--I will sleep no more, but arise;\r\nYou oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless,\r\nstirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.\r\n\r\n\r\n19.\r\n\r\nSee! steamers steaming through my poems!\r\nSee in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing;\r\nSee in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the\r\n maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village;\r\nSee, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how\r\n they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores;\r\nSee pastures and forests in my poems--See animals, wild and tame--See,\r\n beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short\r\n curly grass;\r\nSee, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with\r\n iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce;\r\nSee the many-cylindered steam printing-press--See the electric telegraph,\r\n stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan;\r\nSee, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching--pulses\r\n of Europe, duly returned;\r\nSee the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the\r\n steam-whistle;\r\nSee ploughmen, ploughing farms--See miners, digging mines--See the\r\n numberless factories;\r\nSee mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools--See, from among them,\r\n superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working\r\n dresses;\r\nSee, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved,\r\n close-held by day and night;\r\nHear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.\r\n\r\n\r\n20.\r\n\r\nO Camerado close!\r\nO you and me at last--and us two only.\r\nO a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!\r\nO something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!\r\nO now I triumph--and you shall also;\r\nO hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!\r\nO to haste, firm holding--to haste, haste on, with me.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\r\n\r\nquestions to consider<\/h3>\r\n
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- What content\/themes in these poems relate to themes of the Romantics? The Transcendentalists? The humanitarian theme in American literature? In what ways?\u00a0 Find particular passages to support your insight.<\/li>\r\n \t
- What stylistic elements in these poems relate to those used by the Romantics? The Transcendentalists?\u00a0 In what ways?\u00a0 Find particular passages to support your insight.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n