Leaves of Grass

Scholars consider this poem the weakest in the collection. Whitman revised it several times in different editions, adding some lines and deleting others. It appeared in all editions up to and including the fifth (1871-72) but was dropped from Leaves of Grass in 1881. However, two couplets were salvaged to form the poem “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” which appeared in the 1881 edition. The poem’s theme is a familiar one, with opposites of all kinds having equal value.

Readers may feel that in this poem the word “great” appears so often that its effectiveness is diluted—34 times in a 67-line poem (including 17 times in the first 18 lines, 11 times as the first word in the line). This is similar to the poem “Who Learns My Lesson Complete,” in which “wonderful” occurs 13 times, with 12 such occurrences occurring in the final 13 lines.

The poem expresses the speaker’s belief in common humanity in which all have Social, Political, and Spiritual Equality, all are capable of all things, and all are great in their own way. Acceptance, faith, liberty, and democracy are core aspects of life experienced from this level of understanding. In later poems, Whitman praised democracy more effusively; here, its mention is measured by comparison: “Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy” (Line 9). 

The speaker insists on a universal inner truth known to each individual soul, not something that is imposed or decided by some authoritative source: “The truth in man is no dictum” (Line 36). Justice is a similarly innate value: “Justice is not settled by legislators and laws . . . . it is in the soul” (Line 51), intuitively known by all and unchangeable “by statutes any more than love or pride or the attraction of gravity” (Line 52). 

Also notable is the speaker’s position that silence, which can be as expressive as speech, has a deeper spiritual and emotional significance: “true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling” (Line 28). In contrast, the speaker also offers particular praise for the English language: “Great is the English speech . . . . What speech is so great as the English?” (Line 44). Whitman elaborated on this praise in the Preface: 

The English language befriends the grand American expression . . . . it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of political liberty […] It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth faith self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible (23). 

Overall, the poem that ends the collection evinces Whitman’s typical high-mindedness, taking an elevated view of human life in all its varying manifestations. It emphasizes feeling, emotion, and direct perception over intellectual reasoning about why a particular thing or idea is “great.”