Walt Whitman’s poem “There Was a Child Went Forth” is included in Leaves of Grass. There is a change in tone from the beginning to the end of the poem. The eNotes Guide to Literary Terms includes an explanation of “tone” which may be useful in identifying this shift. As noted there, this term refers to “the author’s attitude.” Their approach to the material overall, a specific part of the content, the reader, or any combination of these will be revealed by their word choice and imagery, as well as elements of style, including diction and syntax. In poetry, style often includes rhyme and rhythm. Whitman writes in free verse, which uses neither rhyme nor regular rhythm.
This poem traces the child’s development from a young age—not just chronologically but also emotionally and psychologically—to maturity. The overall shift in tone that will follow is indicated...
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by the first stanza, which starts with mentions of a single “day” or part of it and “the first object,” and ends with “many years or stretching cycles of years.” That extension of time is what the poet builds in the remainder of the poem.
Starting with stanza 2, Whitman uses content and imagery that correspond with different stages of childhood, comparing it to the time of year—“third-month”—and relating to plants and animals, such “early lilacs,” “morning glories,” and “lambs.” He also evokes a child’s way of beholding the world by using “curiously” and “curious.” Colors are light or bright: “white and red,” “pink-faint.”
The poet moves on to the fourth and fifth months, with imagery to match seasonal changes, including “sprouts,” “berries,” and “blossoms and the fruit afterward.” For the first time, the child is aware of the humans around them, as Whitman describes both adults and children. He continues with description of the child’s family and the upbringing they provide, including negative elements. “The mother with mild words,… a wholesome odor”; “The father, strong,…unjust…/The blow, the quick loud word.” The emotions coming from “the yearning and swelling heart” include both security and inquiry, “the curious whether and how.” In this stanza, a dark element first appears as “night-time”:
… the sense of what is real, the
thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time….
We also see the child looking far beyond what is right around them, to the river and to vehicles, thus indicating their thoughts of travel away from home. “Sunset” picks up on the change from day to night that stands for aging.
The last stanza continues this progression, adding images and colors associated with uncertainty, darkness, night, and distance: “Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling … brown two miles off…,” “maroon-tint.” Similarly, he mentions sleep, a downward direction, or lack of motion. Travel is indicated by the boats mentioned, and the child’s independence is marked by the “solitary” bar. He concludes with the child leaving or growing up, yet retaining his home-grown knowledge, as he “now goes, and will always go forth every day.”
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