Review by Edward Tanguay November 20, 1995

 
Above all, Whitman wants to get personal with YOU, the reader:

STRANGER, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why
should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you? 

In his poem "To a Stranger," he indentifies you and talks to you. You have
to confront him as a poet who wants to have a personal relationship:

PASSING stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours
only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you
take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you

.Soon you realize that back in the mid 19th century, he had thought of YOU
and had waited until you picked up his book and started a relationship with
him. It gets a bit eerie:
 
Full of Life Now
FULL of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.
When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your
comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with
you.)
 
Reading this book is an invitation. You embark on a trip with a loving and
caring teacher:
 
I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
 
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public
road.
 
Although Whitman writes endless praises of America, he really isn't waving
an American flag. What is he waving? What is he championing? It is
democracy, the inclusion of all things and all people. There is nothing
that Whitman does not want to include. In "Salut au Monde!" he includes the
whole world, praising every part of it. (This poem would be a great
backbone to teach a geography class.)
 
You whoever you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd African, large, fine-headed,
nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock whence I
myself have descended;)
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbor of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you
working-woman too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting
arrows to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once
on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates!
you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending
mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets
of Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb ruling your
families and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus,
or lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops of
Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent
of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!
And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the
same!
 
Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!
Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless-each of us with his or her right upon the
earth,
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
 
And you have to admire Whitman's egoism:
 
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,
Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.
And Whitman loves the human body! He loves YOUR body and HIS body and
EVERYbody's body! For him the body is divine; it is the soul; it is all
there is and it should be worshipped and loved and looked at and felt:
 
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!
 
There is no better celebration of the body in this book than in the poem "I
Sing The Body Electric":
 
I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is
enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking
on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases
the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
 
There is nothing on the body that is not holy. All parts of the body are
equal, like a good democracy. He praises all body parts:
 
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am
touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
 
Whitman is starting a new era. Do not worship things of the past but
worship things that exist today. Worship the common place, the carpenters
pounding hammers, the bugs crawling in the ground, the plants in your yard,
the computer you are sitting at (Walt would have praised it if he had had
one!). Everything is holy NOW!
 
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
  
I like section 11 in "Song of Myself." It's a riddle that you can figure
out. What is going on here? Who is watching whom? Is it a fantasy of the
woman? It is interesting erotic but doesn't tell too much. Nicely done.
 
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
 
He includes everybody from whores to the President all on an equal basis,
just naming them all off as equal parts of America and of Mr. Whitman. He's
going to praise them all!
 
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and
pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to
each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great
Secretaries,
 
Interestingly he ends this section, after naming almost every possible
occupation in American, by affirming that all of these people doing all of
their little, everyday, normal tasks "weave the song of myself." Whitman is
all of these people. Each person is a strand in the web that makes up his
all-encompassing person.
 
And when Whitman starts listing, there is no stopping him. The word that
names the thing is holy. Listing is prayer for Whitman. Here is Whitman 
listing parts of the human body. It reads like the index of an anatomy
book:
 
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck,
neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,
breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
 
And here, a list of waterways of the world:
 
I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in
port, some on their voyages,
Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes
Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,
Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape
Lopatka, others Behring's straits,
Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba or
Hayti, others Hudson's bay or Baffin's bay,
Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the
firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land's End,
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter
and Cambodia,
Others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.
 
And he continues with a list of production tools, buildings and the like.
Here, he is praising the everyday workman by naming what he uses:
 
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,
Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,
shingle-dressing,
Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by
flaggers,
The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and 
brickkiln,
Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,
echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts
looking through smutch'd faces,
Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men
around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the
due combining of ore, limestone, coal,
The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the
bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars
of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,
Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,
steam-saws, the great mills and factories,
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or
door-lintels, the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect
the thumb,
The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire
under the kettle,
The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the
sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the
butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,
The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making,
glazier's implements,
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanter
and glasses, the shears and flat-iron,
The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the
counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making
of all sorts of edged tools,
The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is done
by brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers,
Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,
distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,
electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping,
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,
The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,
Pyrotechny, letting off color'd fireworks at night, fancy figures
and jets;
Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the
butcher in his killing-clothes,
The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the
scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul,
and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and
the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles
on wharves and levees,
The men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters,
fish-boats, canals;
The hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard,
store, or factory,
These shows all near you by day and night-workman! whoever you
are, your daily life! 
 
After encompassing everything, Whitman then encompasses all of Time itself:
 
It is time to explain myself- let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment- but what does eternity indicate?
We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
and he connects all generations:
 
This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be
fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and
enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
back through the centuries?)
 
No matter what it is, Whitman wants to take it in, experience it, and weave
it into his own self. The following is a powerful poem about the passive
experiencing of even quite evil things:
 
I Sit and Look Out
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these-all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out
upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
 
I like the form of the following poem with its extensive use of the "ing"
ending. It reads nicely:
 
We Two Boys Together Clinging
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
 
And I liked the thought in this poem that love is always positive and always
creates:
 
Sometimes with One I Love
SOMETIMES with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one
way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
 
Whitman is motivating. Whitman is optimistic. No matter who you are or
what you do, Whitman loves you and wants to tell you that you are important
and what you do is important:
 
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me,
O life?
Answer.
That you are here-that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
 
 Edward Tanguay

*** Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
*** SECOND HALF OF BOOK
*** Notes by Edward Tanguay
*** November 26, 1995
 
 
I've collected some of Whitman's reoccurring themes in this book:
 
1. celebration of democracy
 
2. the love the self
 
3. limitlessness
 
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,
in vain I try to think how limitless,
 
4. a love of American geography and a love of naming places
 
Some threading Ohio's farm-fields or the woods,
Some down Colorado's canons from sources of perpetual snow,
Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,
Some in the north finding their way to Erie, Niagara, Ottawa,
Some to Atlantica's bays, and so to the great salt brine.
 
5. Manifest Destiny
 
6. freedom
 
7. a realization of death and a continuation of life
 
Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
Have you fear'd the future would be nothing to you?
 
---
 
If all came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray'd,
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward
annihilation?
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
The past and the present indicate that it is good.
 
8. the inclusion of everyone as worthy of being considered
 
To a Common Prostitute
BE composed- be at ease with me- I am Walt Whitman, liberal and
lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
 
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you
make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.
Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not
forget me.
 
 
9. praise of the individual
 
I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one,
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.
Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,
The American compact is altogether with individuals,
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one
single individual- namely to You.
 
10. a personal relationship with the reader
 
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see
each other, is every bit as wonderful.
 
11. touching and sensuality
 
12. the body is the soul,
 
13. a deep respect for Abraham Lincoln
 
14. a positive love for life
 
Both I remember well--many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.
 
15. deep loving and caring for human beings

One turns to me his appealing eyes- poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that
would save you.
 
Whitman produces nice snapsnots of specific scenes which seem to include every detail.
Here, a picture of an army:
 
An Army Corps on the March
WITH its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and now an
irregular volley,
 
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on,
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun- the dust-cover'd men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers'd- the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,
As the army corps advances.
 
. . . here a moonlit night:
 
Look Down Fair Moon
Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.
 
and here a fishermen-on-the-beach scene:
 
A Paumanok Picture
Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting- they discover a thick school of mossbonkers
-they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the
beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-
deep in the water, pois'd on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew'd on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,
the green-back'd spotted mossbonkers.
 
The following poem from Drum-Taps, the poems of the Civil War, is a powerful
description of a mother's deep pain of loss for her fallen son:
 
Come Up from the Fields Father
COME up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy dear
son.
Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd
vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and
with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers
well.
Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call.
 
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main
words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through
her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be
better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often
waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
 
A rather peculiar and interesting poem was "This Compost," a poem about soil and the
life and activity therein. "Unnamed Lands" was a poignant tribute to the Indians (a
topic which Whitman treats from time to time, sometimes fairly and sometimes from
quite a manifest destiny point of view).
 
"Miracles" is a poem full of wonder. A great poem for children. I like how a poem
expressing the wonder of life and miracles ends with a question.
 
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 the rest,
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 sundown, or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
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.
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?
 
I also liked the odd and difficult poem "The Sleepers." And I like the rhythm of "A
Noiseless Patient Spider" and its comparison of a spider spinning a web and the soul
producing thoughts.
 
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A NOISELESS patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor
hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
 
I enjoyed reading the old-age poems by Whitman. He has such a peaceful view of his
passing away from this life. Before he departs the life he loved so well, he pauses
to give this whole-hearted and honest "thank you" to life itself:
 
Thanks in Old Age
THANKS in old age- thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air- for life, mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear- you,
father- you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days- not those of peace alone- the days of war the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat- for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown- or young or old- countless, unspecified,
readers belov'd,
We never met, and neer shall meet- and yet our souls embrace, long,
close and long;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books- for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men- devoted, hardy men- who've forward
sprung in freedom's help, all years, all lands
For braver, stronger, more devoted men- (a special laurel ere I go,
to life's war's chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought-the great artillerists- the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)
As soldier from an ended war return'd- As traveler out of myriads,
to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks- joyful thanks!- a soldier's, traveler's thanks.
 

Edward Tanguay

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