Having abased himself by identifying with the lowliest objects, he en-
treats “¤sh-shaped” Father Paumanok (Long Island personi¤ed) to be-
stow a paternal kiss that will reconnect him with nature and permit him
to inhale the breath of inspiration and to decipher “the secret of the won-
drous murmuring I envy, / For I fear I shall become crazed if I cannot
emulate it, and utter myself as well as it.” Many scholars have identi-
¤ed Father Paumanok with Whitman’s own father, whose daily kiss “on-
ward from childhood” is memorialized in “Starting from Paumanok” and
whose body had lain moldering in the Long Island earth since Leaves
of Grass ¤rst appeared. If we assume that Father Paumanok represents
Father Whitman, then may he not be imagined as a Lazarus ¤gure who,
the persona hopes, will “breathe” to his poetic soul the secrets from be-
yond the grave?
However glum his mood, the persona cannot surrender his faith that
the sea will once again restore the inspiration that will enable him to be-
come nature’s intermediary voice for suffering humanity (“me and mine”):
Ebb, ocean of life, (the ®ow will return,)
Cease not your moaning, you ¤erce old mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways—but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you,
or gather from you.I mean tenderly by you,
I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we
lead, and following me and mine.Even in this state of despair, he clings to his faith in the ultimate good-
ness of existence and his faith that from this world of seeming death there
must emerge a possible resurrection. And this would-be interpreter of
nature’s symbols perceives nature vouchsa¤ng a seeming response to his
pleas: The prismatic ooze issuing from his mouth and staining the bleak
shore is a token that his radiant words will endure.
(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See—the prismatic colors, glistening and rolling!)Ultimately, he interprets the sea’s message, “buoyed hither from many
moods, one contradicting another”—and thus mirroring his own moods—
“So Long!” / 141