Walt Whitman’s Transition In any medium of art that is personal to the artist, a change in the artwork can represent a change in the artist. During a period of depression a musician may write heavier, less upbeat music, or a painter may shift to darker tones and more downcast themes. The medium of poetry certainly has the power to reflect the writer’s moods and mental state, and the poetry of Walt Whitman’s demonstrates this power. A comparison of “Song of Myself,” one of Whitman’s earlier poems, and “As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life,” a poem from later in his career, reveals a great change in Whitman from a man of confidence and optimism to one of dissatisfaction and self-doubt.The publication of Leaves of Grass, the book in which “Song of Myself” was published, is the most notable achievement of Walt Whitman’s early career. Whitman set very lofty goals for Leaves of Grass. He hoped to write more than simply a set of poems that could be read and enjoyed by Americans; he wanted Americans to be absorbed by his poetry. He hoped to save America by bringing together a nation on the brink of civil war. Whitman required an enormous amount of optimism to be able to fill the role that he felt he should fill. The task of bringing together the nation through poetry is a great challenge, and Whitman must have had great confidence in himself to take on the responsibility. This optimism shows through in Whitman’s earlier poetry. For example, the first line of “Song of Myself” reads, “I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself.” This confident opening sets the mood for a poem that bursts with bold statements that could only be made by a person with great certainty in his statements and great confidence in the verisimilitude of his declarations. “Song of Myself” preaches universal oneness and beauty, and in the poem Whitman asserts...
