Birds of Passage and Sea-Drift: Summary
Birds of Passsage:
The eight longer poems in “Birds of Passage” are full of idealism and hope for the future. Whitman writes of the universal, an ideal state composed entirely of goodness and transcending the particular circumstances of disease and misery that disfigure the earth. In praise of this desired perfection, he calls on people from all over America to create a future filled with love and build from the achievements of ancient civilizations and the beauty of the past.
Song of the Universal
The poet’s muse commands him to sing a new song: the song of the universal, that seed of perfection that lives in the heart of the world and is part of everyone. Joy and goodness are universal, rising out of “the morbid and the shallow.” Over mountains of sickness and sorrow, an “uncaught bird” hovers in the purified air of the heavens. Whitman directs this description to the reader, addressing all Americans when he claims that the country is moving towards an ideal of love, faith, health, peace, and eternal salvation. He asks if this is only a dream, but answers that the lack of such a society is a dream; the world is only a dream without it.
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
The speaker praises the adventurous spirit of the pioneers and asks his “tan-faced children” to prepare their weapons and march off to battle, just as their predecessors did. He ends each of the twenty-six stanzas with the refrain “Pioneers! O pioneers!” They are going to a new world, mightier and more varied than the old, which they, coming from all over the United States, will conquer. The speaker says that he is “rapt with love” for his children and celebrates the sights and sounds that surround them all. He calls on the daughters of the West and the latent poets of the prairies to join them. After a brief pause for sleep, they are woken by daybreak and the sound of a trumpet only to spring back into line and continue the march, discovering and settling anew.
Myself and Mine
The poet describes “Myself and mine” as gymnastic and resilient, able to shoot a gun, sail a boat, “beget superb children,” and do many other things—though not embroidery or chiseling ornaments. He professes his deep wish that he and those of his ilk might live as they please, uninhibited by the laws or praise of eminent men. Indeed, he rebukes those generally thought of as worthy for living life by other people’s standards and “blabbing by rote.” It is easy to live ignorantly or by the standards of others; it is much more difficult to live freely and guided only by self-determinism, but it is infinitely more valuable to do so. Whitman ends the poem by writing that although life is immeasurably long, with every hour “the semen of centuries,” he has no time to lose in the service of others.
With Antecedents
The speaker lists all the antecedents that have led to his life in America, then gazes ahead to glimpse the “countless years to come.” He would not be here, he says, but for his ancestors “and the accumulations of past ages” of Egypt, India, Rome, and other such periods. Across the long ages, Whitman traces his life, understanding himself as the result of his poetic precursors and the events of history, going on to say that “the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight” are everyone’s antecedents. He respects all the ancient cultures of the world, adopting their ideas, myths, and gods; they could not have been better than they...
(This entire section contains 1641 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
were, just as America could be no better than it is today. He proclaims that “the past was great and the future will be great” but adds that neither he nor the reader should overly venerate eras long past or yet to come, as the present day is at the center of all times and races.
A Broadway Pageant
The poem begins as two Japanese envoys ride through Manhattan in open barouches (horse-drawn carriages), their swords at their sides. The speaker turns his attention to the crowded streets of the city, particularly to the masses of people walking on Broadway. The ancient races of the world come to “Superb-faced Manhattan” from all over the world, hailing from the Antipodes, Japan, and India, scented and dressed in “ample and flowing garments.” Broadway becomes a pageant of ancient cultures, filled with singing and dancing girls, farmers, fishermen, and even “Confucius himself.” The speaker raises his voice to join in the pageant, chanting songs of America, “the new empire grander than any before,” which appears to him in a vision.
The speaker addresses the “Libertad of the world,” which will sit in the center of the pageant receiving the royalty and nobility of the old world, contrasting with “venerable Asia, the all-mother.” The speaker tells the young Libertad to bend low to Mother Asia so that the children of Asia, who have strayed westward for so long, will “now also march obediently eastward.”
Sea-Drift:
The eleven poems in “Sea-Drift” use imagery taken from nature—particularly the sea and the birds that live near and fly over it—to express Whitman’s sense of connection to the natural world, as well as his ambition to create connections in his poetry. The first of these poems, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” uses the cries of a bird who has lost its mate as a symbol of loneliness. Whitman writes that these cries awakened in him the desire to sing his own songs and, in the following poems, emphasizes the importance of imaginative sympathy and connections between souls.
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
Fondly, Whitman returns to his boyhood in Paumanok, recalling the day he found two mockingbirds from Alabama nesting in the briars on the seashore. They had “four light-green eggs spotted with brown” and were always together, until one day when the female disappeared. The poet speculates that she may have been killed, then describes the sorrowful scenes that followed: alone, the male bird remained in the briars, calling for his mate and singing wonderful songs in which he poured forth “the meanings which I of all men know.” The bird sang of his loneliness and the happy life they once enjoyed together, warbling for his love to come back to him. The poet asks if the bird was really singing to his absent mate or if he was singing to him, explaining that this moment made him into a poet: these “thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.”
To the Man-of-War-Bird
The poet addresses a bird flying over head, explaining that it has “slept all night upon the storm” and woken again, still aloft, having risen above the gale. Standing on a ship deck, the poet gazes up at the bird; among the vastness of the unending sea and sky, both are only specks. Unlike the poet, however, the bird was born to be equal to the storm and can cope with “heaven and earth and sea and hurricane.” It travels the world, looking at Senegal in the evening and at America in the morning. Although the poet marvels at the bird’s sedate nature and admires its ability to weather the storm, he wonders if it might experience life more fully if it had a poet’s soul.
On the Beach at Night
A child and her father stand on a beach at night, watching the autumn sky to the east. The clouds are black and threatening, and the child weeps as she looks at them. The speaker of the poem—presumably the girl’s father—addresses her, telling her not to cry and saying that he will kiss away her tears. He tells her that the clouds will not “possess the sky” for long, as Jupiter and the stars, though now hidden by the clouds, will soon emerge again, for they are immortal. As he kisses her, he gives the child “the first suggestion, the problem and indirection” that there is something more enduring even than Jupiter or the stars, something that lasts longer than the sun and the planets.
On the Beach at Night Alone
In the darkness of late evening and standing alone on the shore, the speaker listens to the sea crash along the beach and watches the stars shine through the dim night. As he absorbs these scenes of natural beauty, he thinks of the connections between all things, reflecting that a “vast similitude interlocks all.” This is true of space and time, souls and bodies, gas and water, vegetable and mineral, and even nations and languages. This “vast similitude” connects them all, as it always has and always will.
Song for All Seas, All Ships
Whitman begins with “a rude brief recitative” of ships and the heroes who sail in them. He mentions the captains, the mates, the intrepid sailors, and the ocean itself, that “pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations.” The sea is the “old husky nurse” of nations and men who come to embody her, becoming indomitable and wild as she is. He calls upon the sea to flaunt all the separate flags of the ships that sail in her but to reserve one flag for herself “and for the soul of man.” This universal pennant that shall wave for all time is a symbol of humanity and of courage.
After the Sea-Ship
The poet describes the “myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks” in the wake of a ship and the wind. These curving waves, large and small, are “laughing and buoyant,” a chaotic and joyful procession of fragments, their energy contrasting with the stately progress of the ship they follow.
