Notes for Select Whitman Poems

After building sixty-one lines of speaker-reader relationship, the poem in the sixth and final stanza of the poem, undermines this relationship by using a convention that is generally seen as a faux pas in fiction—the dream ending. With the creation of this crutch, the veracity of the speaker is brought into question and the poem leads to a dead end because the reader can no longer trust the speaker of the poem.

Here, however, Whitman's own transition to a believer in God can be seen. This stanza may be likened to a prayer. Absence of Muse, Presence of God...Significance?

Whitman's general rejection of organized religion is seen in this line. Organized religion as not good enough for America?

Reference to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) in which because of the pride of people, all of the people in the city of Babel were forced by God to speak different languages and no one understood one another.

Introduces a cure to the previously mentioned disease?

This stanza introduces "practical" applications of the disease mentioned in the previous stanza. Whitman's discontent/disillusionment with politics can be strongly seen in these lines.

Trunk's meaning is ambiguous here: it could mean the body of the tree, or, as is more likely, it refers to the core of the human body otherwise known as the torso.

In order for the state of “perfection” to be reached, the classic polar opposites—good and evil—must become neutralized in the journey.

The incomplete becomes complete and the real shifts to become idealized.

A much-tacking ship is a ship that is over-burdened and is having difficulty moving through the water.

The power of science is undermined here by the power/presence of the soul.

Not only does science have authority in this stanza, but it makes use of it. Fiats are defined as commands. Placing the adjective "absolute" before fiats makes science the all-powerful force, at least in this stanza.

The second line of this stanza further enforces science’s position of power placing it on “tall peaks” (l. 11).

Section two is opened similarly to section one in the fact that it ties the poem into the oral tradition of the poem. The speaker begins the first stanza with “Lo!” Despite this seeming connection with the first section, the movement from the first section to the second section cannot be called an organic transition, but it is instead a jarring one. The first section, while extensive, is largely based in the imagery of the earth used in the second stanza and relies heavily on nurturing language. The second section appears to abandon this theme with its first line.

This line places the reader between life and non-existence. What does the "it" of the first clause refer to? Possibility of inverted syntax?

This stanza introduces indeterminacy into the poem, which will continue to pervade the rest of the text.

This stanza balances the intangibility of “this broad earth” and the very physical presence of “grossness and the slag” (ll. 4–5).

Grossness refers to materiality and coarseness, want of fineness. Slag is the refuse left after processing metals and other materials.

Repeated in the second and third lines of the first stanza, the word “sing” further ties the poem into the tradition of the bard because before the widespread availability of printed texts and increased literacy, most works by bards were all oral tales, told by the bard on his travels.

The invocation of the muse is a highly traditional way of beginning a poem. In invoking the muse (or, in this case, telling a story of the Muse), the speaker of the poem is tying into the larger history of poetry and the bard tradition. However, at the same time, the Muse is invoking the poet to come forward, even though the reader is not informed that the speaker is a bard/poet until the next line.

What is meant by “Song of the Universal?” Rather than using the noun universe, Whitman chooses to entitle the poem “Song of the Universal” (emphasis mine), using instead what appears to be an adjectival form of the word. Is this, however, how it is used? The OED defines universal in the modern sense, “extending over, comprehending, or including the whole of something specified or implied; prevalent over all,” but it is also shows the word being used in a manner more conducive to the reading of the poem, “Proceeding from the whole body or number; committed, given, made, etc..., by all without exception of the persons to whom there is reference or allusion.”