Leaves of Grass

In the 1856 edition, this poem was titled “Poem of the Body”; it acquired its present title in 1867, when Whitman added the first line, “I sing the body electric.” In 1856, Whitman also added a long passage (36 lines) at the end, cataloging male anatomy in detail.  

The poem is straightforward in its praise of the human body in its ideal, uncorrupted form, as it must have been in the biblical Garden of Eden. In the third edition of Leaves of Grass in 1860, Whitman hinted at his interest in this Christian origin myth when he placed this poem in the cluster titled “Enfans d’Adam” (or “Children of Adam”). He wrote in his notebook that in this cluster of poems, “Adam, as a central figure and type . . . . with a vivid picture . . . of a fully complete, well-developed man, eld [that is, in old age] bearded, swart, fiery,—as a more than rival of the youthful type-hero of novels and love poems” (Notes and Fragments: Left by Walt Whitman, edited by Richard Maurice Bucke, 1899, p. 124). This is an allusion to the poem’s detailed and admiring portrait of the splendid 80-year-old farmer, a portrait that demonstrates that Whitman did not equate youthfulness with bodily perfection: “This man was a wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of person” (Line 30). Whitman’s work often praises old age as a time of richness and fulfillment: “Song of Myself” opines that “[o]ld age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days!” (Line 1179), while “Faces” ends with a portrait of a serene old Quaker woman illuminated by the light of the sun.  

In its emphasis on the physical aspect of life, the poem emphasizes the intimacy of touch, both sexual and nonsexual. The speaker is drawn to touching bodies; he craves to envelop those he encounters or selects in an all-embracing mutual hug that involves deep emotional connection: “The bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them, / They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and respond to them and love them” (Lines 1-2). The 80-year-old man also inspires this desire for physical connection: “You would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other” (Line 38). The speaker’s delight is to be “surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh” (Line 41). This is “enough” for him, as is “[t]o pass among them . . to touch any one” (Line 42).

Nevertheless, the speaker does not lose sight of the spiritual element that is always part of Whitman’s vision: Women “are the gates of the body and […] the gates of the soul” (Line 61), while men are “not less the soul, nor more” (Line 66)—“The fullspread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul” (Line 70). This assertion underlies the poem’s larger claim about the physical and material world that he praises—that everything in the universe is evolving: “All is a procession, / The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion” (Lines 78-79). Physical bodies are a cause for rejoicing because they bring “immortality,” or the perpetuation of human life generation after generation: The female form is “the bearer of the great fruit of immortality” (Line 65). 

The poem ends by affirming Whitman’s vision of the Social, Political, and Spiritual Equality of all humans, whatever their social or political status. Being oppressed or subjected to abjection cannot interfere with this bodily purpose: An enslaved man’s descendants will have “countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments” (Line 101), and an enslaved woman is “the teeming mother of mothers” (Line 105). In their countless offspring lies “the divine mystery . . . . the same old beautiful mystery” (Line 109).