How old is walt whitman in song of myself

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn. Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself. Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Visit poetry store. Walt Whitman. The poem's frank depictions of sexuality and eroticism earned it a somewhat scandalous reputation. Whitman's contemporary, the equally influential poet Emily Dickinson , wrote about Whitman in one her letters, saying: "You speak of Mr. I never read his book, but was told it was disgraceful.

Whitman also tended to get a little long-winded in his later years. The poem means so many things to so many different people, and its diversity and openness are its greatest strength. It has influenced almost every major American poet of the 20th century, including T. It has also been profoundly important to writers of other nationalities, especially Latin American writers like Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges. In many ways, "Song of Myself" represents the best that American poetry has to offer.

If you are an American or know anything about America, you will likely know and understand this poem even before you read a single line. No other poem so perfectly encapsulates all the noise, confusion, and grandeur of the American idea as well as this one.

Put simply, you should care about "Song of Myself" because it's about you. At a deeper level, he meant this poem to be universal. His poetic persona is like a big vacuum sucking up everyone and everything into itself. When, after September 11, , the French newspaper Le Monde wrote the headline, "We Are All Americans," Whitman would have cheered, because that's exactly how he felt. He didn't mean in the narrow sense that everyone is or should be like the people living inside the borders of a single country.

Nope, for Whitman, "America" was an ideal that anyone could strive for, an ideal of independence, equality, optimism, and brotherly love. We'll just note in passing that Whitman's poetry has been an important source of wisdom for both Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.

I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Now, the word "assume" can be mean "believe" or "take for granted," but it can also mean, "to take on" or "become. He never judges and rarely criticizes. He is someone to whom you could tell your deepest, darkest secrets, and he'd probably chuckle, pat you on the back, and invite you for a walk.

There's something comforting and uplifting about the way he tries to bring people together using words. The first of these is found in the sixth section of the poem.

But they also signify a common material that links disparate people all over the United States together: grass, the ultimate symbol of democracy, grows everywhere. In the wake of the Civil War the grass reminds Whitman of graves: grass feeds on the bodies of the dead.

Everyone must die eventually, and so the natural roots of democracy are therefore in mortality, whether due to natural causes or to the bloodshed of internecine warfare. While Whitman normally revels in this kind of symbolic indeterminacy, here it troubles him a bit. The second episode is more optimistic.