grain, it may chance of wheat, or some other grain.... So also is
the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in
incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown
in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is
raised a spiritual body.^3Paul’s words make clear that the seed grain is, through God’s grace, quali-
tatively different from the plant that grows from it. As one theologian
interprets the passage, “God raises that grain of wheat into a glorious
body, in¤nitely ¤ner than that which is buried; but it is another body, such
as it pleases God to give.” This interpretation implies that it is not the
body buried in the grave that is raised but some sort of spirit body.^4 In
changing the poem’s title from “Poem of Wonder at the Resurrection of
the Wheat” to “This Compost,” Whitman muted the speci¤cally Chris-
tian implications of the earlier title. And over the years, he also muted
other implied references to traditional religion in Leaves of Grass.
The “compost” trope is rich in implication. In words that form a bridge
between the persona’s nearly hysterical outburst of distrust in the cyclical
workings of nature and his expressions of faith in the existence of a spiri-
tual continuity, he voices his astonishment at the earth’s transformative
powers: “What chemistry!” he exclaims. How marvelous that the sea that
“lick[s] my naked body all over with its tongues... will not endanger me
with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it” and that of all the
fruits that grow “none will poison me”; “that when I recline on the grass
I do not catch any disease, / Though probably every spear of grass rises
out of what was once a catching disease.” Both compost and chemistry,
as Whitman uses these terms, incorporate the ideas of the cyclical trans-
formation and renewal and of the earth’s power to bring goodness and
life out of corruption and death. Although compost familiarly designates
decomposing vegetable matter mixed with earth and used as fertilizer,
Whitman extends the de¤nition to include the mixture of earth and hu-
man carrion: “This is the compost of billions of premature corpses,” he
declares in a grisly line that was suppressed in 1867. He also uses the
words compost and chemistry to illustrate the concept that the forces that
support life and the forces of decay are interdependent and reciprocal;
they are nature’s synthesis of opposites—the thesis and antithesis of its
grand continuum. The persona’s fears that the earth is infectious recall
the once widely held theory of miasma (still relied upon by some physi-
100 / “The Progress of Souls”