49 pages • 1-hour read
Leaves of Grass
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Summary
Background
Poem Summaries & Analyses
“I Celebrate Myself” [“Song of Myself”]
“Come Closer to Me” [“A Song for Occupations”]
“To Think of Time . . . . To Think Through” [“To Think of Time”] Summary
“I Wander All Night in My Vision” [“The Sleepers”]
“The Bodies of Men and Women Engirth” [“I Sing the Body Electric”]
“Sauntering the Pavement or Riding the Country Byroads” [“Faces”]
“A Young Man Came to Me With” [“Song of the Answerer”]
“Suddenly Out of Its Stale and Drowsy” [“Europe: The 72d and 73d Years of These States”]
“Clear the Way There Jonathan!” [“A Boston Ballad”]
“There Was a Child Went Forth”
“Who Learns My Lesson Complete?”
“Great Are the Myths . . . . I Too Delight” [“Great Are the Myths”]
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Further Reading & Resources
Tools
“To Think of Time . . . . To Think Through” [“To Think of Time”] SummaryChapter Summaries & Analyses
“To Think of Time . . . . To Think Through” [“To Think of Time”] Summary
In this poem about time and human mortality, the speaker begins by asking his readers whether they have ever contemplated the idea that the future will not contain them. In past ages, the sun rose just as it does now and there were people on the earth, but the people alive now, such as his readers, know nothing of it.
Death is an ever-present reality. Every minute, someone dies. The speaker describes the bedside of one who has just died, with the attending physician and the bereaved family. In the future, life will go on as it always has, with the passage of the seasons and the vibrant humanity in cities and countries, but “we” will not be around to take it in (Line 24). Everywhere on Earth there are endless “burial lines” (Line 30).
The speaker focuses on one particular life, that of a stage driver being taken in a hearse to the cemetery in one cold December. As the coffin is lowered, the speaker describes the man’s life and daily work. Then, the speaker thinks again of how life goes on but the dead pay it no mind. They are beyond all the variety and difference, such as vulgarity or refinement, sin or goodness, and pleasure.
The speaker affirms the value of a person's life; they embody something that was long in the making, like a long-awaited guest who is “beautiful and happy” (Line 83). They participate in and are subject to cosmic laws that apply at all times. The speaker returns to the constancy of death, which happens from coast to coast in the United States and all across the Earth. It happens to the great and the famous, and to the numerous peoples of Asia and Africa, the “American aborigines” (Line 96), and immigrants. These people are not “nothing” (Line 95): They all have value.
The speaker too will die, like everyone, according to “present and past law” (Line 104). However, immortality is also accessible: The life of the person continues in some other form, the details of which he does not know but declares to be good. Indeed, everything in the world is perfect, including his soul. Everything has a soul, including trees, weeds, animals; life and death are preparation for immortality.
“To Think of Time . . . . To Think Through” [“To Think of Time”] Analysis
The poem is a meditation on time, death, and immortality, although the last idea emerges late in the poem.
First, the speaker addresses the transience of life and the constant presence of death. He adopts a conversational tone, asking his reader questions. Have they ever thought about their own mortality? Have they ever thought about how there was life on earth for many ages before they ever got here? He then compares the vast expanse of the past to the equal vastness of the future, when life will go on but we, the dead, will not care. Other people will still enthusiastically build homes, but we will be “quite indifferent” (Line 27): “To think there will still be farms and profits and crops . . yet for you of what avail?” (Line 64).
Midway through the poem, the speaker takes a more optimistic stance, sounding the note of Immortality for the first time. He reveals that there is human life may seem short, but it is also eternal: “You are not thrown to the winds . . you gather certainly and safely surround yourself, / Yourself! Yourself! forever and ever” (Lines 73-74). Immortality is hinted at again when the speaker includes himself in the fate of all. Although death is inevitable, it cannot be the end—that would lack satisfying meaning: “I shall go with the rest . . . we have satisfaction” (Line 102) because “[w]e cannot be stopped at a given point . . . . that is no satisfaction” (Lines 109-10).
Existence implies fulfillment. Life flows on, taking on new forms—a process that includes the human soul, or the essence of a person’s identity, which the speaker asserts will inhabit some other form or space after death. The speaker does not here speculate about what kind of form, although other poems in the collection, such as “Who Learns My Lesson Complete?” endorse this idea. While he is ignorant of the details, he knows the principle and trusts it entirely: “Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good” (Line 118).
The final lines strongly affirm the certainty of immortality, for which all other experiences are preparation: “[T]here is nothing but immortality! / That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it, / [...] and life and death are for it” (Lines 133-35).
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