You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!įrom all that has been near you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,įrom the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me. You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!…

As always in Whitman’s catalogs, the delight is in the details: One of the “miracles” is to be freed from all constraints:įrom this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines…įreely out on the open road, Whitman’s poetic persona apostrophizes the road itself. I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles… I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, He has to picture how the air is empowering: You air that serves me with breath to speak!įor Whitman, of course, just “breathing” the air isn’t enough. And I need a celebration of the fresh air that I can finally breathe: I think because I’m moved by its all-embracing spirit, and I like where the poem takes me. And maybe because, with COVID having kept me cooped up at home for so long, I need some expansiveness. It’s a longish poem of fifty-seven sections (though nowhere near the 372 sections of “Song of Myself”).įor this post, I want to hang out with “Song of the Open Road.” I wonder why. I’ll be using the 1856 version of “Song of the Open Road,” because in general Whitman’s earlier versions are more spontaneous-more, well, Whitmanesque.) But it does appear in the 1856 edition and thereafter-soon re-titled “Song of the Open Road.” (Whitman revised and expanded Leaves of Grass throughout his life: nine editions in all. But no, this is “Poem of the Open Road.” It’s not in the first (1855) edition of Leaves of Grass. If you had read these lines to me without disclosing their source, I’d say “Song of Myself”-because that’s the poem best known for Whitman’s catalogs.

Who could miss his catalogs of inclusiveness, with their unexpected yet spot-on details? None but are accepted, none but are dear to me. They pass, I also pass, any thing passes-none can be interdicted, The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town, The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple, The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics, The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person, are not denied I carry them, men and women-I carry them with me wherever I go… Still here I carry my old delicious burdens, The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Song of the open road