LEAVES OF GRASS

Whitman was greatly impressed by three great engineering achievements: the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), the laying of the transatlantic undersea cable (1866), and the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Utah to produce the nation’s first transcontinental railway (1869). These events resulted in improved […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Passage to India””

A child went out each day and the first object he saw, he became. That object continued to remain part of him either for a short while or for many years. Such objects as lilacs, grass, morning glories, March-born lambs, streets, oceans, clouds, and the horizon’s edge became part of […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus There Was a Child Went Forth””

The poet declares that he sings “songs of continued years” which, like rivers, flow toward the sea. Life’s new currents will soon merge with the streams of death. These currents flowing from the poet’s self will join “the mystic ocean.” The poet collects “vasting” from “the sea of Time” while […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus As Consequent, Etc.””

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d- is an elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, though it never mentions the president by name. Like most elegies, it develops from the personal (the death of Lincoln and the poet’s grief) to the impersonal (the death of “all of you” and […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d””

The poet describes the cavalry unit, “a line in long array,” winding its “serpentine course” between two “green islands,” the men’s weapons shining in the sun. The soldiers become visible as they emerge from the “silvery river.” These “brownfaced men” appear clearly, “each person a picture.” This is an excellent […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Cavalry Crossing a Ford””

Drumbeats and bugles resound through the buildings. The sounds “scatter the congregation” and disturb the bridegroom, the farmer, the city traffic, the sleepers, the talkers, the singers, and the lawyers. All these people hear the war cry, but the timid, the old, the children, and the mothers do not react […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Beat! Beat! Drums!””

The scholarly astronomer lectured with the aid of figures, charts, diagrams, and tables. Soon the poet felt tired and so he escaped from the lecture room and went outside, where he breathed “the mystical moist night-air” and “look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.” Whitman is saying that the […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer””

Out of the ceaselessly rocking cradle of the sea waves, a memory comes back to the poet. He recalls that as a child, he left his bed and “wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot” in search of the mystery of life and death. He is a man now but “by these tears […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking””

“Pioneers! O Pioneers!” is a paean of praise to the pioneers, those Americans who, by great effort, succeeded in transforming wilderness into civilization. Whitman identifies himself, body and soul, with them and is determined to march on the road to progress. The poet appears as a prophet — like Moses, […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Pioneers! O Pioneers!””

“Song of the Broad-Axe” expresses Walt Whitman’s fundamental ideas and his basic means of poetic expression through the use of complex symbolism. Initially the broadaxe signifies the constructive and creative spirit of the pioneers, their great zest and initiative, which led to the opening of the West in America. But […]

Read more Summary and Analysis: Calamus Song of the Broad-Axe””