Walt Whitman
The ability to pinpoint the birth or beginning of the poet lifestyle is rare. It is as rare for the observer as it is for the writer. The Walt Whitman poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is looked at by most as just that. It is a documentation, of sorts, of his own paradigm shift. The realities of the world have therein matured his conceptual frameworks. In line 147 we read "Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake." This awakening is at the same time a death. The naivete of the speaker (I will assume Whitman) is destroyed. Through his summer long observation, the truths of life are born, or at least reinforced, in him. The obvious elements are birth and death, which are both caused by another instance of the latter (death of the "she-bird"). Nature's role is omnipresent. Not only in the sense of it giving a constant livable environment, but also almost deified in the personification of its will and actions. The birth of vision in the speaker is due not only to the observation of death, as that is just a single occurrence, but to the observation of the role of nature in all of its mysterious cycles. Nature is not the sole source of dramatic symbolism in the piece. The actions of the characters themselves reflect the
At the poem's beginning we are exposed to color and vivid description, which is the first category. He asks the bird whom he sings for, but the question only returns to himself. "Blow! Blow! Blow! Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok's shore; I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me. The word final, superior to all, Are you whispering it, and have you been all the time, you sea-waves? Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands? Upon asking for more of an explanation to his intangible feelings the speaker points toward the sea. From this point on the he-bird longs for the lost love of his mate. With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning, On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray and rustling, The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching This latter description is that of a lonesome love deprived of its object with seemingly only the world to blame. In each of the first two elements we find a duel role. The first is the filter of interpretation by the boy who is witnessing the events, it is then filtered through the memory of the boy become both man and poet. Each wave is an answer to his question and to his purpose. The boy has thus created a profound story of want and injustice through translation of natural occurrence (sounds and sea), and the man-poet has created a path though which all could trace the progression of these messages into the poet's insight. Whitman knows of the truth and the vision now born within him. His line of questioning the same as with the bird; is this for me? He finds the answer to lay at the meeting point of sea and land, therefore the physical and spiritual (if we refer back to Miller's theory). This is found in line 168, but eluded to in the introduction. "Land! Land! O land! Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if you only would". The birds' thoughts are his own interpretation.
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Acceptance Essays
