Leaves of Grass

In the title Leaves of Grass, the word “leaves” can represent the pages of the book, as well as blades of grass. Grass is a many-layered symbol in the collection. 

In “Song of Myself,” grass is connected to meditative pondering and the divine: The speaker rejoices to “lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass” (Line 5); later, he invites his soul to “Loafe with me on the grass” (Line 75). This leisurely activity is productive: On the grass, he recalls the transcendent awakening in which he experienced the peace, joy, and love that is the essence of creation. The recollection inspires him to explore the manifold symbolic meanings of grass. It may be “the handkerchief of the Lord” (Line 93), or an expression of the presence of the divine in the world. It may also be a child, born out of other vegetation—that is, part of the cycle of life, eternally growing and changing form. 

Grass is also a symbol of the universality and cyclical nature of life, since it grows everywhere, including “among black folks as among white” (Line 99). This omnipresence makes it a symbol of another universal constant: death. Grass is “the beautiful uncut hair of graves” (Line 101) that grows from “the breasts of young men” (Line 103), old people, women, babies, or “the white heads of old mothers” (Line 107). Since the collection presents life and death as an ongoing cycle, grass thus also becomes a symbol of Immortality via rebirth: “[T]he smallest sprout shows there is really no death” (Line 117), and this idea is repeated toward the end of the poem: “I see you whispering there O stars of heaven, / O suns . . . . O grass of graves . . . . O perpetual transfers and promotions” (Lines 1290-91). At the end of the poem, the speaker imagines himself joining this cycle: “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love” (Line 1329).

Recurring cosmic imagery of earth, sun, moon, and stars establishes a motif of vastness—in both space and time—that reinforces the notion of the expanded self and its connection with everything. 

In “Song of Myself,” the speaker compares human existence with stellar objects to emphasize our eternal and glorious being: “We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun” (Line 564). The similarity continues as he ascribes to stars human-like consciousness and the ability to communicate: “I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven” (Line 1290). Finally, the speaker imagines himself as part of the solar system: He sees his soul “Speeding through space . . . . speeding through heaven and the stars, / Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring and the diameter of eighty thousand miles” (Lines 790-91). The description mingles mysticism and science to give weight to the speaker’s depiction of enormity—the soul’s access to space isn’t simply large, but it specifically orbits at a “diameter of eighty thousand miles.”

The cosmic scale also underscores the importance of each person, playing into the theme of Social, Political, and Spiritual Equality. The vast sweep of space-time echoes the reincarnation and evolution of each individual man or woman. “I Sing the Body Electric” makes this comparison evident: The speaker avers that the downtrodden status of an enslaved man in life does not affect his cosmic importance and his purpose in the grand design: “For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant, / For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled” (Lines 87-88).