5A. "By the Roadside" (1865/1880) by Walt Whitman

 

"The Dalliance of the Eagles."

Click here for the full text and a link to an image of the text as it appeared in the "By the Roadside" section of the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem was written in 1880.

1. I feel like Whitman simply saw this scene of the eagles while out on his walk and felt compelled to record it in this poem. I, honestly, cannot find any true deeper meaning than the idea that Whitman encountered a beautiful and possibly rare scene of nature. There is a beauty to it that I must admit[,] [e]specially when he says[,] “Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, / In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling["] (Whitman 4-5)... there is something captivating about the elegant danger described in the poem that I can only imagine was fascinating to watch. The way that the eagles meet midair and intertwine in an adrenaline-inducing act of love, you could say, is such a lovely and curious act that is normal for their species. I enjoyed the wording that Whitman used when he described the eagles as “the twain yet one (7)” and when he says “…their separate diverse / flight, / She hers, he his, pursuing["] (9-10).” . . .

2. . . . while not exactly alike, ["The Dalliance of Eagles" and "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"] [consist] of a narrator admiring their world from [afar], with one instance of this being stars in the sky, and the other being the sacred mating ritual of two eagles.

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" (1865)

Click here for the full text and a link to an image of the text as it appeared in the "By the Roadside" section of the 1891 edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem was written in 1865.

1. Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” is an homage to the blissful sort of ignorance that allows us to appreciate art, while serving as a commentary on the spoiling of beauty that comes as a result of reducing it to numbers and figures. Whitman utilizes language like [...] “charts and diagrams, to add, divide and measure [...]” to establish the ["Learn’d Astronomer["] as one who seeks to analyze and understand astronomy, one who examines the ends of the Iberians (to borrow from Thoreau), while he procures a more whimsical, blithe diction when describing the narrator’s own account of the cosmos, i.e., “mystical moist night-air [...]” and “rising and gliding out.”

2. Whitman’s ["When I] I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer["]captivated me with [its] message of simplicity. Quantifying the quality of something reduces that quality. We can say that the stars tonight are ["]a complete ten out of ten;["] or you can go a step further and explain the life-span of the stars and elucidate how the moon is gradually moving away from the Earth. This is not a discredit to this manner of interpretation, but Whitman puts it best with his final lines “Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,[/] In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,[/] Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.” The simplicity of the observation of quality is what makes it so serene. The stars are literally otherworldly, and sometimes it is best to interpret that beauty in the most simple of ways.

3.  Whitman uses an anaphora in “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” as he begins the first four lines with the word "when" (1144). This repetition creates an almost chant like rhythm which takes the place of the usual rhyming sequence in poetry that occurs at the end of the line.