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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Few nations survive the ravages of the kind of brutal civil war that split America when Whitman was just beginning in his self-appointed role as America’s Poet. The reality of the Civil War, which was brought home to Whitman during his stint as a volunteer nurse in Washington, grieved Whitman. With the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, a man whose generosity of spirit and profound sense of cosmic consequence drew Whitman, few in the North took the Civil War as personally as Whitman. His poetry during the era, most notably the collection Drum Taps and his powerful elegies on Lincoln’s assassination (“When Lilacs Last at the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain, My Captain”), reflected his wounded spirit and his flagging optimism in what he had hailed in the years leading up to the war as the great American experiment.
The war is now over—in these “days of peace” (Line 1), the speaker hails the resurgence of the American experiment. He celebrates the sheer energy of a nation compelled by the spirit of invention and by its defiant confidence in its own being. The “growth of cities” and the “spread of inventions” (Line 9), widely seen at the time as indicators of how America was losing touch with its rural, pastoral identity, testify here to a nation intent on rebirth, intent on growth and evolution, intent on embracing the possibilities of the new industrial age.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
America
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman