Whitmania: Round Five, All We Need is Love...

In studying Wordsworth’s The Prelude it becomes apparent that he valued love for humanity. In his (or her) article “Wedded in Natural Matrimony: Cosmic Love in Wordsworth and Whitman,” D.J. Moores argues that “[l]ove is the principle of individual growth in Wordsworth’s verse, and it is the stay of being.” Also he writes, “Love thus makes the many forms of communion possible in Wordsworth’s poetry” (163). As we have seen in The Prelude, Wordsworth’s preoccupation with the downtrodden and the “vulgar” is a source of inspiration for him. Furthermore Moores writes, “To overcome the isolation of the individual’s existence in a nihilistic world, one must transcend the confines of selfhood through one or more people” (163). It is his poetry that Wordsworth used to cosmically connect with and heal the people around him.

Similarly Whitman’s poetry can also be seen as trying to heal and connect to the world cosmically. In a time of political instability (i.e. the American Civil War), Whitman’s poetry was a source of comfort and healing. Moores writes, “In 1855 America did not enjoy the same stability it does today, and Whitman’s ecstatic poetry was a means to reassure the people of the conflicted states that the powers controlling the world are ‘near and can be invoked’” (164). Whitman’s medicine is love’s healing power which not only makes people whole but also unifies the past and the present. This can be seen in the fourth stanza of his poem “Starting from Paumanok.”

Take my leaves America, take them South and take the North,
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring,
Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,
And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect
lovingly with you.

I conn’d old times,
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,
Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique? Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

For Whitman love bridges poet to reader. Love causes the reader moves out of their isolated “cogito” because the lover identifies no longer with himself alone but the object of his love. Moores sums up thusly, “Whitman’s poetic, therefore, is an attempt to effect self-transcendence through the healing properties of love” (165).

This same self-transcendence can be seen in Wordsworth’s poem “Lines Written at a Small Distance From My House.”

Love, now and universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth, -- It is the hour of feeling. (21-24)

Love’s power permeates all things and, similar to Whitman, it is able to transcend animate and inanimate borders. As a lover does, Whitman’s poetics and Wordsworth’s nature (cosmic love) offer the reader solace and comfort from a world that causes estrangement and isolation. Moores writes, “In returning home to a the lost consciousness of a primal state of unity, the poet has overcome the only true Romantic evil – that which drives apart. Since the good is ‘equated with the aggregate of what pulls sundered parts together,’ Wordsworth [and Whitman] embrace the most powerful integrative force known to human experience – love” (165).

Let the healing begin.