Leaves of Grass

This poem is longer than all the other poems in the 1855 edition put together. It was titled “Poem of Walt Whitman, an American” in the 2nd edition in 1856 and did not acquire its present title, “Song of Myself,” until the 1881 edition. Whitman made many minor revisions over the years, without fundamentally altering the poem.

Commentators have struggled to define the structure of this long poem. Perhaps it is best to see it as a cycle. First, the speaker celebrates the vastness of his self, his happiness, and his limitless nature. After this introspection, he moves outward to observe or participate in the diverse activities, states of mind, and physical conditions of people everywhere throughout time, but without losing his awareness of Immortality—the transcendental aspect of himself. Then he comes back again to his present self, but from a new perspective, in fresh language. Next, he again pushes out into the world, with his deepened perspective informing his experiences. The speaker’s purpose is always to nudge readers into greater awareness of themselves. If they are shrunk in smallness, the poem’s words will expand them; if they are lost in doubt and confusion, they will see clearly; if they are forlorn, they will become happy. 

Malcom Cowley, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of the 1855 Leaves of Grass, suggests that the narrative structure of the poem comprises nine sequences, as the speaker explores his experiences, feelings, ideas, and thoughts. The “Song” begins like an epic poem: The line, “I celebrate myself” (Line 1), echoes the first line of Virgil’s Aeneid, which begins, “I sing of arms and a man” (Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by Frederick Ahl, Oxford University Press, 2007). But unlike his classical forebears, the speaker proposes to recount not a Homeric or Virgilian adventure or momentous force of arms, but his own individual being. Whitman’s speaker promises to enlighten and empower readers: “And what I assume you shall assume” (Line 2), meaning that his readers will take on the same knowledge and understanding that he has now. 

The next sequence (Lines 73-89, or Section 5), describes the profound experience that undergirds the speaker’s spiritual development and literary achievement. Its placement so early in the poem suggests its importance. As the speaker lies outside on a summer day, his “soul” (Line 73) enters his physical body in a way that reveals the deepest truth: Life is permeated by the “spirit of God,” which is the “eldest brother of my own” (Line 84). The speaker describes this event using erotic imagery of penetration:

You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me, 

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart, 

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet (Lines 78-80).

Many commentators read this section as an embodied spiritual awakening, channeled through the body. Always in Whitman, the spiritual and the physical are intertwined; here, the sublimity of the divine is expressed through the imagery of intimate touch. The technique recalls the writings of medieval mystics like Margery Kempe, who similarly used the language of sexuality to describe visions of the divine. 

Whitman’s speaker also observes that seemingly insignificant, tiny things and creatures around him pulse with the same infinite life that he has experienced entering his own consciousness: 

And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, 

And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, 

And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and pokeweed (Lines 87-89). 

In the third sequence (Lines 90-387, or Sections 6-19), the speaker meditates on the nature of grass, using it as a symbol for the endless transformations that life undergoes. His sense of immortality leads him to observations of diverse people engaged in daily living; he focuses on them while maintaining his own expansive nature. 

The fourth sequence (Lines 388-583, or Section 20) returns the emphasis to the speaker as an individual. The speaker considers his many identities. Is he a collection of physical and spiritual needs, “hankering, gross, mystical, nude” (Line 388)? Should he be sorted by name, nationality, and social class, “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs” (Line 399)? Or can his identity comprise both his divine universality and his material specificity: Is he both “a kosmos” and “Disorderly, fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding” (Lines 399-400)? The speaker maintains that while the physical aspects of human existence should be celebrated, the larger dimensions of the self are the most important: “Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched upon” (Line 526). He warns that no one can ever fully know him, as his deepest layer will always remain beyond reach, by his own design: “My final merit I refuse you . . . . I refuse putting from me the best I am” (Line 578).

In the fifth sequence (Lines 584-646, or Sections 26-29), the speaker decides to take in the voices of others rather than produce his own: “I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen” (Line 584). He hears various people, the whistle of the train, an opera that features a soprano who thrills him “like the climax of my love-grip” (Line 602). He then explores the sense of touch and reaches a new level of physical ecstasy through a sexual act—likely masturbation (Lines 616-46). 

In the sixth sequence (Lines 647-973, or Sections 30-38), the speaker embraces an even larger and more spectacular cosmic vision. Freed from all restraints, he traverses the continent, “speeding through heaven and the stars” (Line 790) as he “flies the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul” (Line 799). As he soars, he absorbs all that he sees. In his vision, he has great empathy for all the people he passes, feeling their suffering: “I become any presence of humanity” (Line 941). He goes back in time to witness a massacre in Texas and a naval battle during the Revolutionary War. This past has led to the unlimited potential of the present and future: “[T]he blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years” (Line 968).  

The seventh sequence (Lines 974-1049, or Sections 39-41) sees the speaker manifesting miraculous powers of healing. He helps the sick and can even prevent people from dying; once he embraces someone with an affliction, he draws them into himself, and death does not dare to lay a finger on them. Moreover, he is also a prophet who brings to humanity a richer understanding than all the gods of the past: “The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious” (Line 1046).   

In the eighth sequence (Lines 1050-1308, or Sections 42-50), his role as prophet and teacher grows into a series of oracular pronouncements summarizing the poem up to this point with easy confidence. He is sure that he knows the physical and eternal dimensions of all things. His belief is both crucial and insignificant, “the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths” (Line 1094); he honors the gods, but considers himself on a par with them: “I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be” (Line 1148). His invites everyone to see that reality is “not chaos or death” but “form and union and plan . . . . it is eternal life . . . . it is happiness” (Line 1308). 

The final sequence (Lines 1309-1337, or Sections 51-52) constitutes the speaker’s farewell. He prepares to die and return to the eternal cycle, eventually to be reborn in some other form. He invites the reader to search for him—he will be waiting for his visitor.