age,” Whitman proposed a new democratic theology that “prepares the
way for One indescribably grander... New Theology... lusty and
beautiful... [the] ¤nal science of God—what we call science being only
its minister.... And a poet of America (as I said) must ¤ll himself with
such thoughts, and chant his best out of them.”^5 Several of Whitman’s
postwar poems and prefaces are expressions of this “new theology” in
which the development of the soul and a readiness for death are essential
elements.
This later phase of Whitman’s poetry was auspiciously inaugurated in
October 1868, when the London Broadway Magazine published ¤ve im-
pressive lyrics about the journey of the soul following physical death:
“Whispers of Heavenly Death,” “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” “The Last
Invocation,” “Darest Thou Now O Soul,” and “Pensive and Faltering.”
“Whispers of Heavenly Death” records an auditory and visual epiphany
in which the persona senses the rebirth—the “parturition”—of some un-
known soul that is progressing from life to death. As he observes the
“®ickering stars” and the mournful “cloud masses” overhead, he is in-
spired by the thought that he can hear nature whispering to him that
another soul is “ascending” and that he is witnessing “some solemn im-
mortal birth, / On the frontier to the eye impenetrable, / Some soul is
passing over.” “Pensive and Faltering” sounds the keynote for many of the
later poems, recording the persona’s “faltering” speculation that the soul
will enjoy an uninterrupted continuity in life and death and that mortal
life is a staging area for a higher state of existence. It also demonstrates
Whitman’s steady drift toward a philosophical idealism that here borders
on spiritualism:
Pensive and faltering,
The words the Dead I write,
For living are the Dead,
(Haply the only living, only real,
And I the apparition, the spectre.)Many of the later poems depict the persona’s conscious self accompanied
on its postmortal journey to eternity by his “soul” or his “fancy”—terms
that apparently designate the purest embodiment of his creative imagi-
nation. According to this dualistic vision, the self and the soul will be
paired in death, but somehow they will remain distinct. For example, the
208 / “Sweet, Peaceful, Welcome Death”