The twenty-two poems in “From Noon to Starry Night” celebrate the poet’s enthusiasm for life in various ways. The subjects of his praise range from the noonday sun to a steam locomotive racing through the snow and, as always, include intricate descriptions of the beauty of the natural world. At the same time, he is haunted by his memories of the war and the faces of the dead and dying, to which he paid little attention when he first saw them. 

Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling

The poet apostrophizes the sun at noon as it shines over the beach and the sea. He says that he has always loved the sun, even since he was a “basking babe.” Even though it is a wordless object, he understands the meanings of its “perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic.” The sun makes farms fertile, shining all along the Mississippi and from Texas to Canada; across the globe, it gives heat and light liberally to all plants, from luxurious grapevines to the meanest weeds. The poet asks the sun to send a ray through him and his chants, then prepare to lengthen the shadows and reveal the starry nights. 

To a Locomotive in Winter

A locomotive is traveling through falling snow at the tail end of a winter day; Whitman describes its body powerfully, calling it a coarse black cylinder with “golden brass and silvery steel.” Its headlight protrudes in the front of the locomotive, and it belches out dense clouds of smoke from its engine. Many cars follow behind, merry and obedient, and the locomotive is an “emblem of motion and power” and modernity. The poet asks it to “serve the Muse and merge in verse” as it moves through the wind and snow, ringing its bell by day and swinging its lamps by night. He remarks on the “fierce-throated beauty” and “lawless music” of the locomotive, which launches its glad, strong shrieks to the rocks, the hills, and the skies. 

Excelsior

The poet asks a series of questions and then, in response to each, explains that he wants to exceed the superlative achievements of others. “Who has gone farthest?” he asks, adding that he would go farther. “Who is just?” he continues, saying that he “would be the most just person of the earth.” He wants to be more cautious than the most cautious, and thinks he is already happier than the happiest. He is prouder than the proudest, both of himself and his city, New York. He is also bolder than the boldest, truer than the truest, and “would show more benevolence than all the rest.” He goes on in the same vein, talking of the love of his friends, his possession of a “perfect and enarmor’d body,” and the amplitude of his thoughts. He ends by saying that he is “mad with devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth.”

By Broad Potomac’s Shore

By the shore of the Potomac, Whitman’s heart is gay, and his tongue is babbling. The summer sky is “pellucid blue and silver” against the purple hills, and the blood-red roses are in bloom again. He asks the roses to perfume his book, and the Potomac to wash each line of his verse, wishing to preserve the spring, the purple hills, and the grass between the pages of the book and the lines of each poem. 

Old War-Dreams

The poet dreams of anguished faces, the look of the mortally wounded, and the terrifying sight of the dead. He dreams of the fields and mountains, beautiful skies after a storm, “and at night...