Song of Myself

“Song of Myself” is a free verse poem by the American writer, journalist, and poet Walt Whitman. The poem is often classified as a work of transcendentalist literature. Originally self-published by Whitman himself in 1855, it was considerably revised and expanded over subsequent decades. In 1889, “Song of Myself” was released in its final form as part of the last edition of the collection Leaves of Grass. This final version—the version referenced in this guide—is considered by literary scholars to be the definitive statement of Whitman’s philosophy and poetic intent.

“Song of Myself” underwent several major structural changes over the years. In its original iteration, it did not have a title. In the second edition, it was called “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American,” which was shortened to simply “Walt Whitman” in the third edition. It was not until the 1881 edition that it acquired the title “Song of Myself,” as well as the section breaks which most modern publications include. In its final form, the poem is divided into 52 sections, thought to represent the 52 weeks of the year.

While “Song of Myself” received a lukewarm reception at best in Whitman’s lifetime, it is now recognized by literary scholars as one of the greatest American poems. Reflecting the incredible diversity of the United States itself, “Song of Myself” shifts easily from personal narrative to reams of data, from erotic fantasy to musings on religion and morality. Among his many influential works, including “O Captain! My Captain!,” “I Sing the Body Electric,” and “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, “Song of Myself” stands out as Whitman’s masterpiece. With this quintessentially American epic, Whitman changed the landscape of poetry in the United States and beyond.

Note to reader: Given the length of the poem, this guide doesn't include line numbers when quoting the poem. If at all, in-text citations refer to sections.

Poet Biography

Walt Whitman (full name: Walter Whitman Jr.) was born in 1819 in Long Island, New York, to a working-class family. His father Walter Sr. was a carpenter; he and Whitman’s mother, Louisa, a devout American Quaker, instilled a deep love of country in Whitman from a young age. Because of his family’s itinerant lifestyle and their lower economic class, Whitman was only formally educated until 11 years of age before he began working.

As a young man in the 1830s, Whitman worked in print shops and as a teacher, though neither provided lasting fulfillment. In 1838 he started a short-lived newspaper, The Long Islander, and began publishing short stories and poetry. These efforts saw increased success for Whitman in the journalism world in the 40s; in 1842 he was hired as an editor and his writing began to be noticed by the elites of the American literary scene. He also became more politically active in the Democratic Party and in the newly formed, anti-slavery Free-Soil Party, believing the United States could serve as a model of democracy for the rest of the world.

Various public and personal disappointments saw Whitman withdraw to a more private life as a carpenter with his father in the 1850s. There, he worked on his poetry—a collection which would eventually be self-published as the first edition of Leaves of Grass on Independence Day, July 4, 1855. Now considered to be a seminal work of American poetry, Leaves met lukewarm reception in Whitman’s day, though a few of Whitman’s literary contemporaries recognized its merits (including Whitman’s literary hero, the American essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson). Whitman would continue to refine, revise, and expand Leaves over his lifetime. An exciting reprint opportunity with a major publisher in New York promised new levels of success and renown when, in 1861, disaster struck. The American Civil War began. Whitman (and his publisher) went bankrupt.

The Civil War was a turning point in Whitman’s personal and professional life. After his brother George was wounded at the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman pulled strings and leveraged his network (including Emerson) to be employed in the Army Paymaster’s office in Washington, where he lived for the next 10 years. There he became deeply involved in supporting soldiers and casualties in army hospitals. Though Whitman was a staunch Unionist, he had deep compassion for the Confederate soldiers too. The relationships Whitman developed in the hospitals of Washington inspired his 1865 collection Drum-Taps, considered by many to be the best poetry produced during the war period. During this time Whitman also met Peter Doyle, an ex-Confederate soldier turned Unionist who became Whitman’s closest companion. The nature of their relationship is uncertain. While Doyle’s sexual orientation was known to his family, Whitman never publicly addressed his orientation, though his poetic voice comfortably inhabited both gay and bisexual perspectives.

The death of Whitman’s mother Louisa in 1873, combined with his own failing health, set Whitman on a path of creative and physical decline. He continued revising new editions of Leaves of Grass—scholars agree that there are six or nine versions, in total—but enjoyed only middling popularity in his own day. While his more traditional and restrained “O Captain! My Captain!” was much preferred over “Song of Myself” in America, Whitman found many fans abroad: Oscar Wilde; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Bram Stoker are all counted among his fans. Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey, in 1892 at the age of 72.

Poem Text

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” 1892 version. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Section 1

With the famous opening line “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” Walt Whitman begins his poem with one of its primary subjects: the idea of self, and by extension, the relationship between the self (“I”) and everything which is not the self (“you”).

In a moment of leisure (“I lean and loafe”), the poet considers both abstract metaphysical things (his soul) and mundane physical things (a spear of grass). Every atom of his being (including his tongue) was formed in America; his family goes back four generations in the States. Healthy at 37 years of age, he begins his poem, and intends to not stop writing it until he dies. “Creeds and schools” are “in abeyance”; that is, Whitman has left his preconceived notions at the door, and asks his reader to do the same. This journey is intended to free all parties from the preconceived notions and artificialities which prevent human connection.

Section 2

Whitman describes interior spaces “full of perfumes” which he enjoys a great deal. In light of his musings in Section 1, these “perfumes” may represent peoples’ scholarly debates and interpretations. Whitman is aware of the power of these fragrances to “intoxicate” him, but he will not allow it. He moves instead to the outdoors where, naked, he enjoys the odorless air, which has “no taste of distillation” (that is, in contrast to over-processed, manmade fragrances).

Whitman narrows in on the biological process of breathing and what it provides for the body, “respiration and inspiration.” He is enthralled with his physical self and how his body perceives and enjoys scenes in nature, even the “belch’d” sound of his own voice on the wind. He invites the reader to stay and acquire the true origins of poetry with him, rather than relying on opinions taken “at second or third hand” or mediated through experts and books. If everything goes according to plan, the reader will be able to stand strong and independent in life, even from Whitman himself.

Section 3

Section 3 introducers the “talkers,” people who believe in the finite, immutable passage of time—that is, clearly marked beginnings and ends. Whitman does not subscribe to this philosophy of the universe. He prioritizes the now, the present moment, above all else, which he connects fundamentally to sex and reproduction (“Urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the world”). In sexual intercourse, two individual selves emerge from chaos to “knit” new life. From this point of view, there is no beginning or end for the individual’s body or their soul: when the “seen” (the body) becomes the “unseen” (the soul, after death), there is still “proof” of its existence: namely, the children produced through sex and by extension, the various tangible impacts one makes on the world in life.

Whitman rejects the talkers’ need to categorize, divide, and micromanage by returning again to the now: everyday moments in his own body. He imagines a pleasant scene in which a “loving bed-fellow” sleeps at his side and withdraws in the morning. His lover leaves Whitman “baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty.”

Section 4

In Section 4, Whitman describes the “trippers and askers” who, like the “talkers” of Section 3, burden him with distracting, distressing, and ultimately unimportant rules of society. Whitman catalogues these annoyances: They include fussing over micro-expressions at dinners, worrying about money, and the 20th-century equivalent of the 24-hour news cycle. Again, Whitman separates himself from these outside influences, “they are not the Me myself.”

He pulls out the camera lens and paints a portrait of himself observing himself, “both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.” Whitman recalls when he used to sweat it out in debates with other scholarly types (perhaps these debates are the intoxicating perfumes of Section 2?). Now, Whitman says, “I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.”

Section 5

In this controversial section of “Song of Myself,” Whitman addresses his soul directly in the second person, stating that neither his soul nor his body should be considered less than the other. Underlining the theme of perfect equality between the two parts of man, he describes his body having sexual intercourse with his soul. His soul “plunge[s]” its tongue in his heart and reaches to feel his beard and his feet.

A Biblical conclusion to the section reiterates the unity between Whitman (the self, “I”) and everything else in creation, from other people to ants and worms to the reader of his poetry (“you”).

Section 6

Section 6 is one of the most important sections of the poem for understanding Whitman’s philosophy of life. In it, he touches on the origins of the collection’s title, Leaves of Grass.

A child approaches Whitman with a handful of grass and asks him what it is. At first Whitman is unsure how to answer. Maybe grass is a symbol of his own capacity to hope. Maybe it is like a handkerchief dropped by God, in the hopes that someone might find it and wonder to whom it belongs. Maybe the grass is a child of plants, or maybe it is a sign of shared humanity among people, as grass grows in yards across race and class lines. The final suggestion will occupy the rest of the section: Maybe grass grows up from the bodies of people in graves, proving that death does not really exist, as it always generates life (“The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, / And if ever there was it led forward life”).

This observation builds on Whitman’s argument from Section 2, where he rejected the talkers’ belief in a firm beginning and end for all things. To refute them, he points to the grass. While it may seem like the dead lack a voice, their decaying corpses produce new life—grass, which even visually resembles tongues. These “tongues” of the dead continue to speak to Whitman from beyond the grave (“O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues”). Whitman reiterates his optimistic view of life and death: “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.”

Section 7

Whitman opens Section 7 with a bold statement: It is just as lucky to die as it is to live. Because living things are made from dead things, and dead things go on to create new life, every stage of existence is “good.”

Whitman expands the boundaries of himself: He is a “mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as [him]self.” He concludes the section by cataloguing the many types of people he is connected to: men, women, children, the elderly. He demands that all “Undrape!”, reemphasizing his desire to see past their outer dressings—their garments, but also their societal obligations—to perceive the truth of the person underneath.

Section 8

In Section 8, Whitman occupies a God-like omnipresence, looking in on different stages of other peoples’ lives. He watches a baby in its cradle, “silently brush[ing] away flies” from its face. He watches two young lovers have sex from a hilltop. He sees a tragic suicide, too. Finally, he witnesses a pastiche of human joys and sorrows in the city—vignettes catalogued in vivid, highly sensory language—and, after taking in these various urban scenes, moves on. An eternal traveler, Whitman never stays in one place for long (“I come and I depart”).

Section 9

In this very short, self-contained section, Whitman moves the setting from the city to the country. He describes an idyllic rural scene: a barn, where dried grass is being loaded and transported on a wagon. Whitman is there to help (presumably with farm work), but enjoys the sensory pleasures of the moment too. He leaps from the cross-beams of the barn to land in the hay and delights in the sensation of the cart’s motion.

Section 10

Section 10 changes scenes again, this time to the American frontier, the edges of “civilization.” Whitman first imagines being a hunter “amazed” at his “own lightness and glee,” who camps out by a fire at night with his dog. Next he is a sailor on a Yankee clipper, shouting “joyously” from the deck.

The poet shifts to the second person, wishing “you” were there to see a marriage between a trapper and a Native American woman as her family and his friends socialize nearby. Finally, Whitman inhabits a person who shelters a runaway slave in his home, feeding him and helping him recover. A gun leans at the ready in the corner; it is unclear if it is meant to protect the slave from slave-catchers or to assist in a possible altercation with the slave himself. Honest meetings between people, Whitman acknowledges, can be messy: Intimacy has equal capacity for revelation and violence.

Section 11

Section 11 is another famous vignette, or self-contained scene, in “Song of Myself.” It features a lonely wealthy woman who voyeuristically watches young men bathing in the river. The woman is 28 years old; there are 28 young men. Whitman addresses the woman in the second person, asking “Where are you off to, lady?” Though she is standing still in her room, he also “sees” her frolicking with them in the water (in her imagination) as the 29th bather.

In erotically-charged language, the poet described the young men’s naked bodies; an “unseen hand” passes over them. It is unclear to whom the hand belongs; the woman, in her imagination? To Whitman? To the reader of the poem? All parties are now taking part in this encounter. In the final stanza of the section, the gender of the revelers becomes increasingly unclear as they play together in the water. The young men’s “white bellies bulge to the sun,” for example, evoking pregnancy. The lines between “I” and “you” and “them” continue to blur.

Section 12

Like the young woman voyeur in the previous section, Whitman himself watches men in Section 12. These men are physical laborers: a butcher-boy and blacksmiths. The poet engages in light debate with the butcher-boy (“repartee”) and enjoys his “shuffle and break-down,” dances originating from African American folk tradition.

Next come the blacksmiths, who “environ” their anvil with almost hypnotic, repetitive motion. Whitman fixates particularly on their physicality as they work (e.g. “grimed and hairy chests,” “their massive arms”).

Section 13

Section 13 opens with a scene of a Black man driving a dray, or a cart for carrying heavy loads. Whitman seamlessly repositions the character: He is standing “steady and tall,” with a presence which is both “calm and commanding” and carefree (“he tosses the slouch of his hat away”). Whitman loves the man, and extends this love to his team of oxen as well. Addressing the cattle directly, he wonders at how expressive their eyes are, which seem to him to communicate “more than all the print I have read in my life.” The section concludes with an image of Whitman scaring up a few ducks and reflecting on his love for different sorts of animals just as they are.

Section 14

Whitman watches a wild goose leading his flock at night. While other people might find the gander’s vocalizations (“Ya-honk”) meaningless, the poet listens closely. As he did in Section 13, Whitman catalogues many animals and sees himself in them. But as much as the poet loves the creatures he sees and the people he encounters in day-to-day life, “What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.”

Section 15

Section 15 is the second-longest section of the poem. It features another of Whitman’s famous catalogues, a poetic device which, in this example, lists the many different sorts of people found in the city. Each line is a sensory mini-window into another person’s life: farmers, deacons, singers, laborers, etc.

The poet occasionally punctuates his catalogue with parenthetical interruptions which suggest his thoughts or comments on the scene at hand. One such interruption can be found in his three-line section on a prostitute, whom men jeer at, but the poet pities: “(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you).”

Whitman closes the section by describing how he “tends” inwards towards all these people, and they “tend” outwards towards him: They are all threads in the tapestry as he “weave[s] the song of myself.”

Section 16

While Section 15 expands Whitman’s lens—he examines dozens of people from all walks of life—Section 16 restricts the scope of the poem back to the poet’s individual self again. But it is clear that he has somehow absorbed aspects from all the people he has encountered; he now contains multitudes. In this section, Whitman showcases many apparently contradictory aspects of himself: as the first line summarizes, he is “of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise.”

Whitman focuses particularly on being equally at home in various regions of the United States, from coast to coast. This is fitting, as he describes America as “the Nation of many nations.” Whitman vocally resists any force which might demand that he simplify his own diversity—and by extension, the diversity of America.

Section 17

In this very short section, Whitman interrupts his lengthy catalogues with a simple statement: His thoughts are not original, they are “really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands.” If the concepts he shares in this poem are not “yours” too—that is, if they are not easily relatable to every reader’s experience—then they are “nothing.” Whitman returns to the theme of grass from Section 6: His poetry should grow across the class and racial lines, “wherever the land is and the water is.”

Section 18

For the first time Whitman focuses on the topic of war, which he touches on briefly in Section 4 as a source of distraction from the important things in life. In typically contradictory fashion, he describes himself playing celebratory music not only for the winners of a battle, but the losers: “Vivas to those who have fail’d!” Because Whitman believes that battles are often lost for the same reasons they are won, he sees no use in judging the participants based on outcome alone. He is equally interested in praising heroes and “the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!”

Section 19

In Section 19, Whitman describes a meal where everyone is welcome, “the wicked just the same as the righteous.” Just like grass, his invitation list crosses not just moral lines (e.g. spongers and thieves), but also class and race lines (e.g. the enslaved and sex workers).

Whitman imagines the pleasant sensory experience one might enjoy with another person at such a dinner, “the press of a bashful hand” or “the touch of my lips to yours.” Again, physical contact is prioritized as an important part of interpersonal relations. Finally, he intimates that he will share with “you” in confidence things he would not tell anyone else. There is a tone of irony here: In promising to share his secrets with each individual reader, Whitman’s promises to share himself with everyone.

Section 20

Whitman wonders how his body is physically formed from that which he consumes: “How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?” In turn, he wonders what atomic matter constitutes human beings, both himself and “you.” Following along this line of thought, Whitman again ties in themes he first touched on in Section 6, where he considered the cyclical nature of existence through the metaphor of grass growing from graves—that is, death producing life. He is “august” (or noble) and “deathless”: He has existed before in other forms, and will continue to exist after the so-called death of himself.

Whitman builds on this foundation and extends its implications to the religious and social spheres. He will wear his hat inside if he likes. He sees no reason to adhere to religious sentiment (“Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?”). Because he (and all of us) cannot be truly destroyed in any way that matters (“I laugh at what you call dissolution”), it does not matter whether Whitman comes into his own “to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, / I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.” Because he does not subscribe to the temporal restraints of life and death, he can live freely in the now, without restriction.

Section 21

Whitman rededicates himself as a poet of dual, contradictory aspects: the Body and the Soul; heaven and hell; woman and man. Addressing “you” again, he wonders if you think you have achieved some special place in society. “Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?” Such distinctions, he reminds the reader, are transitory and trifling. Whitman situates himself as a more primordial force, untethered by time: “I am he that walks with the tender and growing night.”

The rest of the section is arcane and ritual-like. In repetitive language resembling prayer, the poet addresses night first, then Earth in its many aspects, asking the latter to “Smile, for your lover comes.” Both sections are erotically charged: The night is “mad summer naked night,” and the “rich apple-blossom’d earth” has given Whitman love, which he wholeheartedly returns.

Section 22

Having loved the night and the earth in Section 21, Whitman turns to the sea in Section 22. In language which evokes Section 5—where Whitman described his soul making love to his body—the poet tells the sea, “We must have a turn together.” The ocean rocks the naked poet with language evoking human sexual intercourse and ejaculation (e.g. “Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you”). Whitman links the ocean’s constant state of change—its tides, its ability to storm one day and be calm the next, to expand and to contract—to himself. Like the sea, he flows in and out of the boundaries himself; he is a “partaker of influx and efflux.”

In one of the more difficult portions of the poem, Whitman states his open intent to be a poet of “wickedness” as well as “goodness.” To embrace the entirety of the human experience—as the primordial forces of night and earth and ocean do—one cannot cherry pick pleasant things from the bad. In the same way that the earth is beautiful, but also composts dead and disgusting materials, the “unflagging pregnancy” of the now sometimes produces repellent things (like “scrofula,” or bacteria associated with tuberculosis). Still, for Whitman, the mystery is less that bad things exist and more that anyone could be considered wicked—“a mean man or an infidel”—in light of the absolute wonder of the universe.

Section 23

Whitman returns to the concept of time—specifically its unbounded nature, its lack of beginning or end—and contrasts the vastness of eternity to the present moment, the now, which Whitman tries to encapsulate in his poetry. These musings are informed by scientific discoveries of his day, which Whitman interprets as supporting his vision of time constantly recycling old elements into new. “Hurrah for positive science!” he says.

Lexicographers, for example, were discovering the etymological history of words, tracing the origins of language back thousands of years to “cartouches,” Egyptian pictographic ovals. This new theory of linguistic continuity mimics the continuity Whitman sees throughout the universe: Languages, like people, live and die and are reborn in new forms again. Whitman lumps scholars of history and language in with chemists and biologists: Both the “hard” and “soft” sciences are doing worthwhile work. “Gentlemen,” he writes, “to you the first honors always!”

But Whitman is careful to note that scientific facts “are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, / I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.” That is to say, he is not interested in scientific facts for their own sake, but rather in how these discoveries inform his poetic interests. Again, the themes of regeneration and procreation are paramount. Whitman does not care about sexually impotent “neuters and geldings”—he prioritizes “men and women fully equipt,” or able to reproduce. In isolation, scientific knowledge is impotent too; it is useful only in its ability to enhance our understanding of the universe and our place in it, which Whitman argues to be eternal and constantly changing. It is Whitman’s job as a poet to synthesize the knowledge gained by scientists into “a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.”

Section 24

In this extremely important section of Song of Myself, the poet speaks the name of his subject for the first time: “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.” He introduces himself like a Greek epic hero, using the Grecized spelling of the word “cosmos” and including a toponymic, or a personal descriptor based on his place of birth (“of Manhattan”).

While Whitman is a cosmos, a universe unto himself, he is also definitively physical: “fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding.” He demands a breakdown of barriers and situates himself as an individual voice which still, somehow, speaks for everyone (“I give the sign of democracy”). He is the mouthpiece for “many long dumb voices” of people who have lived and died before, and is particularly interested in representing the “forbidden voices” considered indecent to most. As he says in Section 22, he will be a poet of goodness and wickedness alike.

Above all, Whitman is mysteriously both physical and spiritual. He prioritizes “Seeing, hearing, feeling” while also being “Divine […] inside and out.” He makes holy everything he touches with his body and explicitly links acts of sex and physical labor to acts of religious devotion—his armpit sweat is “finer than prayer.” Whitman flirts with atheistic language here too; if he worships anything at all, it will be the “spread” of his own body and all its parts.

Notably, Whitman’s catalogue of his physical aspects moves interchangeably between human physiology and the animal world. He has hay for hair; his sweat is brooks and dew. As always, the poet enjoys sensory experiences of the natural world: “To behold the day-break!” he marvels. “The air tastes good to my palate.” The section ends with the poet observing the approach of daybreak: “Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, / Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.” Here, near the halfway point of the poem, the sun—and by extension, the light of understanding—approaches, but has not yet arrived.

Section 25

Section 25 zooms in closer on the sunrise Whitman observes at the end of Section 24. He marvels at his own ability to perceive the sun rising with his eyes and not be obliterated. He attributes this resilience to his own perpetual power to “always send sun-rise out of me”; that is, the poet has just as much power as the sun to impact his world.

This image of the sunrise allows Whitman to meander into musings about the power of sight and its relationship to the power of speech. He can verbally describe even that which his eyes cannot see through his imagination (“My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, / With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds”). In other words—like the sun—his eyes allow him to shine the light of understanding on everything around him, but his ability to speak and imagine extends his reach even further.

Thus, the power of the poet is comprehensive. The dual ability to perceive (to see) and to respond to what one has seen (to speak or write) is a crucial talent. It allows the individual to articulate thoughts “waiting in gloom, protected by frost” of his subconscious. Whitman compares these thoughts to flower buds waiting to open to the sunshine. But even this incredible combined power of sensory experience and imagination cannot account for all the vast mysteries of the universe—and the self. “Encompass worlds,” Whitman tells the reader, “but never try to encompass me.”

Section 26

While Section 25 focuses on Whitman’s sense of sight, Section 26 focuses on his sense of hearing. “Now,” the poet says, “I will do nothing but listen.” Whitman again embarks on one of his famous catalogues: in highly onomatopoeic language he describes many different sounds in the human experience, “all sounds running together.”

He shifts to a specific aural experience, a concert. At the swell of the chorus over the instruments, Whitman states simply: “Ah this indeed is music—this suits me.” The music’s powerful effects send Whitman on a wild roller coaster of deep, physically-felt emotion. He compares this transportive ecstasy to being flung into space, carried over the sea, buffeted by a hailstorm. Whitman marvels at the almost mystical experience affected by the concert, connecting it to the deepest mystery of Being.

Section 27

In this short section, Whitman covers another of the senses: touch. First he asks, “To be in any form, what is that?” As he details elsewhere—particularly Sections 6 and 20—he is eternally interested in the shifts and changes of our physical bodies as they interact with their environment.

Unlike the quahaug—a type of North American clam—Whitman’s body is “no callous shell.” There are “instant conductors” all over which, when touched, “seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me”: the body electric. This ability to touch things harmlessly is enough for the poet; in fact, just bringing his own body in physical contact with another person’s is “about as much as I can stand.”

Section 28

Continuing his exploration of touch, Whitman moves again into the realm of the erotic. Section 28 is as sensual as it is vague. Generally speaking, the poet describes what he fears at the end of Section 27: the overwhelming assault (and pleasures) of sexual touch, at a level he can barely stand. It is unclear if Whitman is alone or with a partner; he describes “prurient provokers” unbuttoning his clothes in one moment, but says “[his] own hands carried [him]” to ecstasy the next.

Whitman deploys similar devices in Section 11, where he blurs the lines not only between the voyeuristic woman and the bathers, but also between the author and his characters, and even himself and his reader. In this scene, perhaps Whitman is with a lover; perhaps the lover is himself. Or perhaps we, the readers, are breaking the fourth wall, inflicting these pleasures on Whitman in the very act of reading him. Whitman again blurs the lines between “me” and “you,” between the self and everything else, between the masculine and the feminine. Physical stimuli strain “the udder of heart for its withheld drip,” an image which paradoxically evokes a male erection through a metaphor of an udder, a feminine reproductive organ.

A group of nameless sentries—perhaps Whitman’s rational thought and inhibitions—abandon the poet as he is driven to the peak of ecstasy (the “headland”), where Whitman finds himself helpless in the face of a mysterious “red marauder.” He is rendered witless by the experience and puts all the blame on physical touch, which he recasts as a villain. This brand of paradisical suffering can be relieved only through orgasm, which, naturally, ends both the sexual encounter and the section (“My breath is tight in its throat, / Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me”)

Section 29

After the rushed sexual ecstasy and peak of Section 28, Whitman dials the intensity down. In this, the shortest section of Song of Myself, he reflects on the withdrawal which occurs after sexual intercourse, both physically and emotionally. Withdrawing touch is personified as “sheath’d” and “hooded,” evoking a penis. But even after sex is over, Whitman describes its lingering benefits in both financial and organic terms: The pleasurable aftermath is both “perpetual payment of perpetual loan” and “rich showering rain.”

Section 30

In light of these revelations after sex, Whitman reconsiders one of his most important tenets: Everything in the universe has its own “truth,” its own value and purpose, which neither demands human understanding nor allows it. One does not need to logically, forcibly wrench the truth of the world out like a surgeon delivering a child with “forceps.” One must be willing to be passive, to sit back, observe, take in (as Whitman states in Section 4, “I witness and wait.”)

Sex, love, and the union they create between people—the “damp of the night”—are more illuminating for Whitman than “logics and sermons,” which “never convince.” Again, he rejects the “talkers” and “trippers and askers” of Sections 3 and 4: Organic experiences will always take precedence over manmade contrivances. The calm after sex (“a minute and a drop of me,” that is, ejaculation) settle and enhance Whitman’s thinking. Sensual relationships, he concludes, not only delight us in the moment; they help us discover truth, which for Whitman is self-evident.

Section 31

In Section 31, Whitman begins to transition the poem back from the highly personal, individual realm to a broader vision of the universe. He does this by placing humankind in the line of evolution (another cutting-edge scientific theory of his day). Whitman returns to the organic material of life. For him, “a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars”; all of physical existence is built of atomic material which constantly recycles itself in the process of life and death. In this light, a grain of sand is “equally perfect” to a blackberry, a toad, a cow.

In evolutionary terms, Whitman recognizes that the form of the human body—and his own body—has not been static over time. It is the result of a long process of change and mutation. He is “stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over”—the human body is an aggregate of various bestial evolutionary lines, almost to the point of comedic absurdity. In light of this truth, there is no point in resisting the ever-changing nature of the cosmos. “Plutonic” rocks and mastodons and all manner of historical phenomenon on earth have “in vain” resisted Whitman’s arrival in his current form.

Section 32

In Section 31, Whitman reestablishes humankind as intimately related to other forms of life in the universe: Human bodies share morphological similarities with quadrupeds and birds. Here, Whitman carries on the connection between animals and people, but this time highlights the many differences between them, both positive and negative.

Animals, Whitman posits, lack the self-consciousness of people. They are “self-contain’d,” “They do not sweat and whine about their condition,” nor are they beholden to material things, as people are. This freedom is a double-edged sword: No animal is “respectable” in a societal sense, but no animal is unhappy either.

Taking a stallion as his subject, Whitman considers how lovely and free it is, and how much both he and the horse enjoy working as a team. But though Whitman enjoys the time spent with the stallion as horse and rider, he uses him “but […] a minute, then I resign you.” He is confident that despite the stallion’s speed, he can outstrip him, even when he is standing or sitting still.

Section 33

At the end of Section 32, Whitman claims he could outrun a horse. In Section 33, he proves his stamina. At 160 lines, this is far and away the longest section of Song of Myself.

At first, Whitman imagines he leaves the earth in a hot air balloon (the “ties and ballasts” describe the devices used to fix a balloon to the ground). But the poet seems to become supersized too, almost god-like—his “elbows rest in sea-gaps,” his “palms cover continents.” Whitman begins his aerial survey of the United States, a lengthy catalogue which paints picturesque American scenes from coast to coast.

He starts in a forested wilderness, with log huts, prospectors, and bears, but soon sees farmland too—“growing sugar […] the yellow-flower’d cotton plant […] the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze.” There are signs of civilization, “cheese-cloths hanging in the kitchen […] trip-hammers crash,” but the poet (still in his balloon) does not stay there for long—he is in constant motion. He sees a beach and ocean now, a whale and her calf, a steam-ship, a shark, then a regiment led by “the dense-starr’d flag” (that is, the American flag) approaching Manhattan. Next he enjoys the many social pleasures of rural life—drinking cider, “friendly bees, huskings.” In the barnyard, animals are mating. From buffalo plains to pleasant gardens to “the arch’d gates of a cemetery,” Whitman surveys all manner of topological and sociological scenes in American life.

Following this catalogue, the poem’s form shifts and begins to prioritize social interactions over descriptions of landscape. Whitman declares himself “Pleas’d” with all sorts of people, “the homely woman as well as the handsome.” He inhabits the experiences of many different people, from pressing his nose to a shop-window to stalking “toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him.” He even imagines “Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side.”

Above all the poet emphasizes his speed, his unwillingness to stay in one place—he rushes through space, heaven, the stars, “Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, / Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing.” Whitman is a restless traveler and enjoyer of life: “I tread day and night such roads.” No guard or law can stop him.

Even as Whitman wildly reasserts his freedom, the poem becomes more somber. He begins to imagine sadder scenes, “silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick.” But for Whitman, even the hard parts of life are worth celebrating: because they belong to humanity, they belong to Whitman, the poet of goodness and of wickeness, too. “All this I swallow,” he writes. “It tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, / I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.” Whitman embraces radical empathy as a form of democratic expression, putting himself in the shoes of a runaway slave, a fireman crushed by debris, a soldier in the thick of battle. The section ends abruptly from the soldier’s point of view: his dying general encourages him to “Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments.”

Section 34

Section 34 continues the theme of war. It is a description of a last stand in Texas Whitman learned about in his youth, though the poet is quick to mention that he does not describe the battle for the Alamo. Rather, his subject is “the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.” The inclusion of their exact number may recall the 28 bathers of Section 11, though the contrast is clear: while the bathers revel in their bodies and sexuality at leisure in nature, these young men will be denied that pleasant experience. Like the bathers, Whitman underlines that these boys are at the peak of physical prowess, “the glory of the race of rangers” (that is, the Texas Rangers). All are under the age of 30.

Though it is “beautiful early summer,” the brave men are “massacred” to the last man. They show great courage, but are cut down and maimed in pitiful ways. Whitman punctuates their slaughter with matter-of-fact statements of the time of day: “The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight […] At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies.”

Section 35

Section 35 is another battle story, this one on the sea. It is a patriotic “yarn” told to Whitman by his great-grandfather; Whitman tells it in the first person through his ancestor’s voice. It describes a battle in the Revolutionary War between the American ship BonHomme Richard and the British ship Serapis.

The opposing captain is English, “there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be.” The battle drags long into the night; the situation is grim. At ten o’clock the master at arms releases the prisoners from the brig to give them a chance at survival, assuming the ship will sink. The opposing captain asks if the Americans will strike their colors—that is, surrender—but Whitman’s great-grandfather’s captain laughs, shouting “We have just begun our part of the fighting.” Despite fire and persistent leaks in the hull, he remains calm, “his eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.” Around midnight, the British ship surrenders.

Section 36

Section 36 continues the story of the sea battle from Section 35, but this time the tone is less optimistic. After the battle, the survivors must face the bloody aftermath. Despite the victory, Whitman’s great-grandfather’s ship is sinking—the decision is made to move onto the conquered enemy’s ship. The captain, who was previously a brave and inspiring figure, “coldly” gives orders, his “countenance white as a sheet.”

Many men are dead or dying; Whitman describes the corpse of the young cabin boy and of an old mariner. A catalogue of horrific sensory images rounds off the section: the torn rigging, the smell of guns and powder, the sight of the “silent and mournful shining” stars overhead and the smell of the sea and beach, the screams of the men being attended to by the surgeon. It is as if Whitman cannot find words to describe the loss. He ends the section with a fragment: “These so, these irretrievable.”

Section 37

Section 37 sees an abrupt tonal shift. As if affected by the abysmal message of the previous section, the poet shouts “I am possess’d!” He inhabits completely “all presences outlaw’d or suffering.” Whitman, the empath who embraces every human experience, now finds himself overwhelmed by the sufferings and evils of humankind. He imagines that he is a convict who frightens the wardens. He is a mutineer, a criminal, a dying cholera patient, a beggar. The poet of goodness and wickedness leans heavily into the latter.

Section 38

Throwing off the negativity of Section 37, Whitman shouts “Enough! Enough! Enough!” He realizes grief has stunned him and demands to be given space and time to recover. He is on the “verge of a usual mistake,” that is, thinking that “the mockers and insults” and “the trickling ears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers” mean all of life is bad.

Whitman looks to the ultimate image of suffering in western civilization: Christ’s crucifixion. Like Christ, he too will be resurrected from this empathetic death: “Corpses rises, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.” Rejuvenated, Whitman forges ahead on his poetic journey to the inland and the coast, past “all boundary lines.” He salutes his Eleves (the French word for student) and urges them to continue taking notes and asking questions.

Section 39

Section 39 showcases a mysterious figure, “the friendly and flowing savage.” It is unclear if Whitman is thinking of a Native American man or a person living on the frontier in general. He questions where the man is from, suggesting various places which were considered wild in Whitman’s day, on the edge of civilization, from Canada to Oregon. Wherever the man is from, “men and women accept and desire him” for his jovial simplicity and physicality.

Section 40

Here, as he does in Section 25, Whitman compares his power as a poet to the power of the sun (“Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask […] You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.”). He has thrown off his malaise and exhaustion; he is his confident old self again. “I am not to be denied,” he says, “I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare.”

Whitman demands, almost aggressively, to connect with and support people: he kisses the cheek of field workers and janitors, he impregnates women, he sits at the bedside of dying men, turning doctors and priests away. He even interrupts an execution, seizing a man dropped from the scaffold and raising him before he can choke: “O despairer, here is my neck, / By God, you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me.” Whitman will not allow anything to harm those he has embraced—and he has, again, embraced all of humanity. Addressing the reader in the second person, he reminds them that to be known by a poet is to be somehow possessed by them.

Section 41

Whitman carries on the theme from Section 40: He is here to help people. While he brings help for the sick, he believes assistance is even more necessary for “strong upright men.” Part of this tough love will be taking stock of religion, measuring “exact dimensions” of the various gods and heroes people have believed in over the years, from the Greek Kronos to the Viking Odin to the Aztec Mexitli. While Whitman is intent on paying these old beliefs every attention and respect they deserve, he also will give them “not a cent more.”

Whitman uses these “rough deific sketches” he has made of the gods and applies them to himself and to the men and women he sees. In his poetic universe, every person is divine. Boys who work on fire engines, for example, are “no less to me than the gods of antique wars”; the feats of strength and bravery they perform are godlike. Whitman describes other everyday people in divine terms too. Farm workers are “lusty angels” tilling the earth. A red-haired stable hand (“hostler”) has the power to redeem sins.

The material world, Whitman believes, has been unfairly sidelined for the world of the supernatural. “The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,” he writes. “Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed.” Whitman himself is like a god in his role as a poet-creator; he swears this “by his life’s lumps,” or the tough parts of life. He places himself in the “womb of the shadows,” ready to generate new life again.

Section 42

Whitman raises his voice, “sweeping and final,” in the midst of a crowd, calling his “children,” his “intimates.” His voice is like an instrument with “reeds within”: He feels “thrum” of the climax of his song, the ease of shifting from chord to chord. This fluidity is underlined as his head “slues” around on his neck.

The setting, again, is urban: “This is the city and I am one of the citizens.” Around him, people are ambling with “dimes on the eyes.” In ancient Greece, coins were placed on the eyes of dead people to ensure safe passage to the afterlife. Thus, for Whitman, these capitalist zombies are a sort of walking dead. Ruthless materialism has made them this way. To “feed the greed of the belly” the lower class continually buys and sells, but are never allowed into the feast Whitman imagines in Section 19. While “many” are “sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,” only a few wealthy people “idly” own the wheat and claim it.

Whitman tries to jar the reader into a new way of thinking with another catalogue, challenging them to see the laborer behind the material goods they enjoy (e.g. “This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy?”). Whitman believes that economic systems, like religion (“sermons, creeds, theology”) should bow to the well-being of each individual, to “the fathomless human brain.”

Section 43

Whitman makes clear that he does not “despise” religious systems: his own belief system encloses “ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,” as his poetic voice attempts to encompass the experience of all people. He believes he will be reincarnated after 5,000 years; he imagines taking part in religious rituals throughout history, from “powwowing with sticks in the circle of obis” to marching the streets in the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.

He knows that people have always suffered and will always suffer, “I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair, and unbelief.” He experiences this nadir himself in Section 37. He compares the disasters in peoples’ lives to a whale hunt (“How the flukes splash!” How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!”).

But Whitman’s brand of faith—belief in the now, in the present moment as informed by the past, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth he is obsessed with—will “in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.” He catalogues the many people his philosophy of life will support, from “the young man who died and was buried” to “the old man who has lived without purpose.” Every individual thread in the tapestry of the now weaves in its own rich history: Everyone and everything are important and immortal, from human beings to amoebas, “sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in.”

Section 44

Carrying on the theme of religion, Whitman encourages his congregation to attend to his sermon (“let us stand up”). The poet will explain his philosophy of life again. He first strips everything away and launches “all men and woman forward with me into the Unknown.” With the petty constraints of the concepts of time and society removed, the full sprawl of eternity—and our place in it—can begin to be understood.

Trillions of years have already passed; there are trillions ahead. The beings which have been born have created vast diversity, and will create more still, and all these beings are equal: “I do not call one greater and one smaller, / That which fills its period and place is equal to any.”

Whitman wonders if people have been cruel to others—they have not been cruel to him. They are powerless to do so in any lasting way. Whitman’s existence represents “an acme of things accomplish’d”; everything that has happened before has guaranteed his existence, he “waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, / And took [his] time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.” The atoms that would make up his body were “hugg’d close” by a gentle universe for millennia: “Immense have been the preparations for me, / Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.” Before his mother bore him, the particles that would become his body were parts of a nebula, a plant, they were cradled in an egg in the mouth of a dinosaur. “All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight” Whitman and, by extension, every individual on the planet.

Section 45

Whitman reflects on his own life. First, the “span of youth! Ever-pushed elasticity!”, then adulthood, “manhood, balanced, florid and full,” with many lovers. Now Whitman finds himself an old man and is glad of it. “O welcome,” he says, “ineffable grace of dying days!” Every stage of life creates (“promulges”) something new, and none more-so than death, “the dark hush.”

Whitman imagines his own sphere of influence—his “kosmos” of Section 24—as a solar system and looks out on those beyond. “Wider and wider they spread,” he observes, “Expanding, always expanding, / Outward and outward and forever outward.” Each individual’s system affects the orbit of another. Even if the movement of the entire cosmos was brought to a grinding halt, “it would not avail in the long run,” as the cycle of death and life, evolution and transformation would simply begin again.

Whitman ends this cosmic image on a personal note. At the appointed rendezvous moment he will surely meet with the Lord, whom he characterizes as “the great Camerado” (that is, a lover).

Section 46

After the sweeping vision of the cosmos Whitman presents in Section 45, he suddenly pulls the reader back to the realm of the individual, to interpersonal relationships. He paints himself as a kindly travel companion. “My signs are a rain-proof coat,” he writes, “Good shoes, a staff cut from the woods.” He imagines himself wrapping his arm around the waist of every person and leading them up a knoll, pointing out features in the natural landscape. “Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you,” he says. “You must travel it for yourself.”

This road is not far—“perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know.” Addressing the reader as a “dear son,” he encourages us to take the journey of life with him. If we grow tired, Whitman will take up our burdens, trusting we will do the same for him in the future. He cannot answer our questions—"you must find out for yourself”—but he will give us food and drink for the journey. He has washed the “gum” from the reader’s eyes; now we “must habit [ourselves] to the dazzles of the light and of every moment of [our] life.”

Whitman concludes with a metaphor of learning to swim. “Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,” he writes—now, he hopes this poem will enable you to become a bold swimmer who finds joy in the water, even when the waves are choppy.

Section 47

Whitman further explores the metaphor of the poet as teacher and the reader as student. He sees himself as “the teacher of athletes,” and the student who “most honors [his] style […] learns under it to destroy the teacher.” Whitman’s ideal pupil will be “wicked rather than righteous out of conformity or fear.” These rough and tumble types will care little for outward appearances; they will be ready for a fight (or a song) at a moment’s notice.

As a teacher Whitman encourages independence, while acknowledging that the knowledge he imparts is inescapable. Like the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, who was described as the gadfly of Athens, Whitman’s “words itch at your ears till you understand them.” And like Socrates and his Socratic method, Whitman claims that he does not force knowledge onto his reader; rather, he brings them to discover the truth within themselves (“It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you.”)

Whitman’s school is not indoors; to understand him, his pupil must go into the wild and meet with as many types of people as possible, from mechanics to soldiers to women at needlework. When death approaches, Whitman claims, these teachings are a companion and a comfort: as they die, he writes, “those that know me seek me.”

Section 48

As Whitman nears the end of his poem, he reiterates his primary teachings in stark language, punching each line with powerful anaphora in the repetition of “And.” Whitman mimics the speech patterns of God in the Old Testament here as he lists his own version of the Ten Commandments.

First, the soul is not more important than the body. Second, the body is not more important than the soul. Third, nothing—not even God—is more important to a person than their own self. Fourth, a life without radical empathy is the equivalent of walking to your own funeral. Fifth, if one refuses to take part in capitalistic materialism, the earth will provide. Sixth, sensory experience will always trump scientific knowledge: To take in the world with your senses, even something so simple as a “bean in its pod,” “confounds the learning of all times.” Seventh, any person doing any mundane job can be a hero. Eighth, no object is too small or insignificant to not be the center of the universe. Ninth, he encourages all to embrace and celebrate the incredible diversity in the world as an extension of the incredible diversity of self: “Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

Finally, do not be too curious about God: Whitman is not. In fact, “No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.” Whitman sees God in every object, every person he meets, while accepting that he does not understand God at all—and, in any case, he does not understand “who there can be more wonderful than myself.”

Section 49

Death does not frighten Whitman either. He imagines the moment he was born: the accoucheur (a male midwife) arrives, the infant Whitman “recline[s] by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,” that is, the walls of his mother’s womb. He sees the vaginal opening, “mark[s] the relief and escape[s].” He is born.

That birth will soon progress into death. Whitman returns to cycle of destruction and renewal which is so incredibly important to him. He addresses a corpse, telling it he thinks it is “good manure,” but that should not offend—manure produces “white roses sweet-scented and growing.” Whitman even imagines himself to be the corpse, reaching to “the leafy lips” and “the polish’d breasts of melons,” an erotically-charged moment that evokes Whitman’s soul having sex with his body in Section 5 (compare the reaching here to “reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet”).

Life, in short, is “the leavings of many deaths.” Whitman again hears this whispering of the grass of the graves—the tongues of the dead from Section 6. Whitman surveys a ghastly, spooky scene, a “turbid pool that lies deep in the autumn forest” and “black stems that decay in the muck”—but he knows these deathly things are the products of life, and they will produce life again. The “ghastly glimmer” of the moon is just “noonday sunbeams reflected” from somewhere else.

Section 50

As the momentum of the poem slows, nearing its “death,” Whitman reflects on his work. He explores a certain unnamed something, which he calls “it.” This force is within him when he is “wrench’d and sweaty,” when his body cools again, when he sleeps. It is not “chaos or death”—it is “form, union plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.” The final word evokes an important line in the Declaration of Independence: Every American, Thomas Jefferson wrote, is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Section 51

In this penultimate section of the poem, Whitman shifts the burden of understanding and interpretation to his reader. Both past and present “wilt” like a flower; he has both filled them and emptied them, and now moves forward into an uncertain future.

As if on his deathbed, Whitman addresses the listener directly, asking what they have to confide in him. “Talk honestly,” he encourages, sensing his time is short. “No one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.” He wonders who is finished with their work for the day, who will walk with him now—if anyone will speak before he is gone. Here, at the end, the poet who once proclaimed no fear of death may not feel so sure.

This section contains perhaps the most frequently quoted lines of “Song of Myself.” Summarizing Whitman’s all-encompassing empathy, his commitment to the paradox and inconsistency inherent to the human spirit, he asks,

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes).

Section 52

As he does in the transition from Sections 36 to 37, in this final section of “Song of Myself,” Whitman picks himself back up from a nadir of sorrow and doubt. His wallowing is interrupted by the flight of a hawk nearby, who chides him for his loitering—remember that animals, unlike people, “do not sweat and whine about their condition” (Section 32). Invigorated by this experience, Whitman “sound[s] [his] barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

As the sun sets, it “coaxes” the poet “to vapor and the dusk.” Like a ghost, Whitman departs from his poem (and perhaps, life itself) “as air,” drifting in “lacy jags.” He consigns his physical self, his corpse, to the earth to become grass, as millions of people have done before. “If you want me again,” he tells the reader, “look for me under your boot-soles.” Whitman’s form may be incomprehensible at that point, but still, the contact will strengthen the body of the reader, much as compost strengthens a rose.

If the reader cannot find Whitman, he encourages them to keep looking always: “I stop somewhere waiting for you.”