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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The poem’s opening line announces that the poem will explore a post-bellum America, an America broken just eight years earlier by the cannibal logic of a bloody civil war. Less a narrative, which is a story with a plot and characters, and action compelled by suspense and moving toward some big-bang climax, “As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days” is something of a pronouncement, the speaker engaging with nothing less than his nation rather than with any specific audience, much less with himself. Inspired by the exponential growth of post-Civil War America, the poet uses as his starting point how just a short time ago the country, “the struggle of blood finish’d” (Line 2), was devastated, scarred, its landscape in smoke and ruin. Although the poet is not naïve enough to pretend that sometime in the future “more denser wars,” “more dreadful contests” (Line 5) will not shake the foundations of his country again, America for now has rebounded and now thrives in a kinetic environment animated by a boom of new inventions that represent the practical applications of innovative theories in the sciences. In turn, the “growth of cities and the spread of inventions” (Line 9) have fostered America’s boom economy, resulting in the rebuilding of America’s urban infrastructure.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
America
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman