OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING – WALT WHITMAN

Ø  Title page of 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass which included Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.

Ø  Originally titled A Child’s Remembrance, the poem was first published in the Saturday Press on December 24, 1859.

Ø  The newspaper included this introduction: “Our readers may, if they choose, consider as our Christmas or New Year’s present to them, the curious warble by Walt Whitman”.

Ø  The poem was later included in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass under the title A Word Out of the Sea and occasionally erroneously referred to, even by Whitman himself, as A Voice Out of the Sea.

Ø  Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking is found in the title section, Sea-Drift.

Ø  Several of Whitman’s individuals poems, including Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, focus on the seashore; his first was A Sketch

Ø  The poem, an elegy, the poem asserts the triumph of the eternal life over death.

Ø  The meaning of the poem is not stated explicitly, but it springs naturally from a collection of the narrator’s childhood days.

Ø  Whitman imaginatively recreates the childhood experience of this inquiring lad and also shows how the boy becomes a man, and the man, a poet.

Ø  This time sequence is as much the essence of the poem as is the growth of the consciousness of the poet.

Ø  Memory plays an important part in this dramatic development.

Ø  First, the boy tries to absorb the moving song of the mockingbird.

Ø  Later, the boy replaces the bird as a significant character in the drama because he attempts to fuse the substance of the bird’s song with the secret emanating from the sea; this synthesis is, in essence, his poetry.

Ø  The word “death” is “delicious” because it is a prerequisite for rebirth. Thus the secret of life which the boy grasps from the sea is the recurrent pattern of birth-death-rebirth.

Ø  Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking is one of Whitman’s great poems because of his use of image and symbol.

Ø  the title itself is a symbol of birth.

Ø  The sun and the moon, the land and the sea, and the stars and the sea waves contribute to the atmosphere and symbolic scenery in the poem.

Ø  These images deepen the effect of the emotions in the poem, as in the bird’s song, and are part of the dramatic structure.

Ø  The poem is very melodious and rhythmic and may itself be compared to an aria (in opera, an aria is an elaborate melody sung by one voice). Its use of dactylic and trochaic meter is very appropriate in describing the motion of the sea waves and their meaning.