that will return later in the poem. Here directed
toward the immediate present, the word estab-
lishes preference for the process of knowing over
possessing the known that is so crucial to the
poet’s spiritual concept. This curiosity, intense
in the moment, is also the catalyst for connecting
with the future, leading to the poem’s first move
to link humanity across generational and tempo-
ral boundaries. Whitman boldly declares that
those who will also ride the ferry in ‘‘years
hence’’ are equally in his meditations, using the
familiar ‘‘you’’ to address both his fellow com-
muters and those who will cross the river far in
thefuture....
The poems comprising the eighteen-poem
cluster Whitman grouped under the title ‘‘Whis-
pers of Heavenly Death’’ were composed pri-
marily in the late 1860s following the Civil
War. In many of the poems one gets the sense
of the poet regaining his balance after the expe-
rience of the war, expressing an attitude toward
death more speculative and hopeful, more
philosophical but less ‘‘ecstatic’’ than the boy
dancing on the shore in ‘‘Out of the Cradle
Endlessly Rocking.’’ The sequence begins with
‘‘Darest Thou Now O Soul,’’ where Whitman
asks his soul to accompany him to a ‘‘blank’’
and ‘‘unknown region,’’ an ‘‘inaccessible land.’’
Part of what seems an initial hesitancy in the
poem stems from the poet’s assertion that this
unknown realm is sure to be devoid of human
‘‘voice,’’ ‘‘touch,’’ and ‘‘flesh.’’ When a reader
pauses to consider the significance of these
human elements on both Whitman the man
and his poetic endeavor, as both are represented
inLeaves of Grass, any surprise at a slightly
tentative tone diminishes,for delight in fleshly
contact and what ‘‘Song of Myself’’ terms the
‘‘hum’’ of the ‘‘valved voice’’ is one of the major
strands binding this poet’s project. Even in his
late work, for Whitman to move toward any
dimension lacking the press of fellow humanity,
to ask his soul to leave its steadfast companion,
the body, is to explore truly foreign terrain.
But as with his earlier epics of psychological
struggle and breakthrough, ‘‘The Sleepers’’ and
‘‘Cradle,’’ Whitman offers a sudden, almost spon-
taneous breakthrough into a dimension of freedom
and possibility, not a specific locality or even desti-
nation, only a state without ‘‘ties’’ or ‘‘bounds’’
where ‘‘we burst forth, we float.’’ Again, as in the
earlier ‘‘Crossing BrooklynFerry,’’ the liquid ele-
ment represents both freedom and acceptance of
the unknown, an ability to feel part of the vastness
of time and space without fear of being absorbed
or obliterated. Here, and in the poem that follows,
the title poem of the cluster, Whitman begins to
lay the groundwork for movement into the realm
of death by celebrating the possibilities of the
unknown.
In the third poem, ‘‘Chanting the Stature
Deific,’’ Whitman addresses what William
James termed ‘‘the varieties of religious experi-
ence’’ through an acknowledgment of the vast-
ness of concepts of God. Whitman had made
several earlier attempts at this poem, suggesting
both the difficulty of the subject and the poet’s
determination to fully engage it. It first appeared
inSequel to Drum-Taps(1865–66), and Gregory
Eiselein has suggested that in initially placing the
poem in this collection Whitman sought ‘‘a post-
war message of reconciliation and religious con-
solation.’’ The poem begins by asserting that
concepts of the divine are both iconic and multi-
ple, old and new, evolving: ‘‘Chanting the square
deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides,
/ Out of the old and new, out of the square
entirely divine, / Solid, four-sided, (all the sides
needed,).’’ In four relatively concise sections,
Whitman evokes versions of four types of divin-
ity: the traditional, all-judging God; the compas-
sionate, healing God; the defiant, exiled angel;
and the universal, timeless spirit of God. Each
God pronounces his identity and names himself
in his own voice, insisting on the various mani-
festations of his type through the history of reli-
gious beliefs. Hence, the God who speaks in
section 1 identifies himself as ‘‘Jehovah,’’ ‘‘Old
Brahm,’’ ‘‘Saturnius,’’ ‘‘the Father,’’ and ‘‘brown
old Kronos,’’ old and modern at the same time,
‘‘executing righteous judgments.’’ This elder,
judging God is both beyond time and of time
itself, unforgiving. In section 2 Whitman turns
to ‘‘the cheer-bringing God,’’ ‘‘Lord Christ,’’
‘‘Hermes,’’ and, in his evocation of the healing
and compassionate God of love, suggests images
of himself running throughoutLeaves of Grass,
most notably in the ‘‘Drum-Taps’’ sequence.
While there are certainly aspects of Whitman
the nonconformist in the revolter-Satan of sec-
tion 3, readers will most likely feel that the God
of section 2 is the deity most identified with by
the ‘‘Walt Whitman’’ presented by the poet in
Leaves of Grass. The most rhythmic of the four
sections, the lines of section 2 are consistently
long, swelling in movement, a catalogue of gen-
erosity following the actions of a God who, likeA Noiseless Patient Spider