Interactive Literature Selections Whitman

go to page content

Search:

Whitman

Walt Whitman

Vocabulary from the Selection

abeyance
barbaric
contender
creed
disposition
exult
fissure
harbor
impalpable
infidel
jag
linguist
loitering
quadruped
suffice
tread
trill

During Reading Strategy
Fill in the Chart as You Read

Guided Reading Question 1
What does the speaker celebrate? In what way is the speaker connected to the reader?
Click to answer

from Song of Myself

1

	I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
	And what I assume you shall assume,
	For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

	I loafe and invite my soul,
5	I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

	My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
	Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
	I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
	Hoping to cease not till death.

10	Creeds and schools in abeyance,
	Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
	I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
	Nature without check with original energy.
	Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
15	Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
	Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

	Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
	I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

• • •

6

	A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
20	How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
	I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Guided Reading Question 2
What question does the child ask? What is the speaker’s first response?
Click to answer

	Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
	A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
	Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

25	Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

	Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic¹,
	And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
	Growing among black folks as among white,
	Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,² I give them the same, I receive them the same.

30	And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

	Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
	It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
	It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
	It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
35	And here you are the mothers’ laps.

	This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
	Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
	Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

	O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
40	And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

Guided Reading Question 3
What does the speaker say the grass is?
Click to answer

	I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
	And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

	What do you think has become of the young and old men?
	And what do you think has become of the women and children?

Guided Reading Question 4
What does the speaker hear? What hints does the speaker not understand?
Click to answer

45	They are alive and well somewhere,
	The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
	And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
	And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

	All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
50	And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

• • •

7

Guided Reading Question 5
What does the smallest sprout show?
Click to answer

	Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
	I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

	I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,

	And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
55	The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

Guided Reading Question 6
What attitude does the speaker have toward death? Why might the speaker feel this way?
Click to answer

	I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
	I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
	(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

	Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
60	For me those that have been boys and that love women,
	For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
	For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
	For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
	For me children and the begetters of children.

65	Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
	I see through the broadcloth and gingham³ whether or no,
	And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

• • •

31

	I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
	And the pismire⁴ is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
70	And the tree-toad is a chief-d’oeuvre⁵ for the highest,
	And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
	And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
	And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
	And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions⁶ of infidels.

75	I find I incorporate gneiss⁷, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent⁸ roots,
	And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
	And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
	But call any thing back again when I desire it.

	In vain the speeding or shyness,
80	In vain the plutonic rocks⁹ send their old heat against my approach,
	In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones,
	In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
	In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
	In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
85	In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
	In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
	In vain the razor-bill’d auk¹⁰ sails far north to Labrador¹¹,
	I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

• • •

32

	I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
90	I stand and look at them long and long.

Guided Reading Question 7
What does the speaker say he is not? What does the speaker claim to be?
Click to answer

	They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
	They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
	They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
	Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
95	Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
	Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

• • •

52

	The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

	I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
	I sound my barbaric yawp¹² over the roofs of the world.

100	The last scud of day holds back for me,
	It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
	It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

	I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
	I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

Guided Reading Question 8
Why would the speaker like to live with the animals? In what ways are they different from humans?
Click to answer

105	I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
	If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

	You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
	But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
	And filter and fibre your blood..

110	Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
	Missing me one place search another,
	I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Guided Reading Question 9
Where should you look to see the speaker? What will the speaker do for the people he is addressing?
Click to answer

O Captain! My Captain!

	O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
	The ship has weather’d every rack¹, the prize we sought is won,
	The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
	While follow eyes the steady keel², the vessel grim³ and daring;

Guided Reading Question 10
What has the speaker’s voyage been like? Was it successful?
Click to answer

5	But O heart! heart! heart!
	O the bleeding drops of red,
	Where on the deck my Captain lies,
	Fallen cold and dead.

	O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
10	Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
	For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

Guided Reading Question 1
What has happened to the captain of the ship?
Click to answer

	For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
	Here Captain! dear father!
	This arm beneath your head!
15	It is some dream that on the deck,
	You’ve fallen cold and dead.

	My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
	My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
	The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
20	From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
	Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
	But I with mournful tread,
	Walk the deck my Captain lies,
	Fallen cold and dead.

Guided Reading Question 12
According to the speaker, why are the people on shore celebrating?
Click to answer

Back to the top