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I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?
EXPLANATION WITH CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,...
These lines from ‘Song of Myself show that every living factor in this world is ignited with the ‘urge’. The urge is the basic essence of life. The procreant urge is there in all opposite living factors. It is there in human beings. It is present in the world of Nature and in the animal world. The poet emphasizes the fact that the world itself is ruled by this basic ‘urge’. ‘Urge’ ushers in ‘life’ Whitman being the poet of the Body and Soul sings of the glory of the human being filled with the ‘procreant urge’.
SUMMARY AND CRITICAL APPRECIATION
The poet in the beginning says that he does not like to deal with philosophical talk about the beginning or end of creation. To him the present moment is important. He believes in enjoying the present in all its splendor. Hell and Heaven is what a man experiences in this world itself. Hence he wants everyone to lead a healthy, useful and zestful life.
Whitman, as Miller describes, “identifies man with the fundamental generative forces in nature. In his sexual Identity and experience man may discover unity with nature, the life force that subterraneously invites all into one creative whole. The procreant urge of the world” pervades the Universe and the world of nature. He glorifies every part of his body. In other words he sings of the body - the physical; and of the soul-the spiritual. He goes into a mystic trance, when he visualizes
... the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleepsat my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread...
The line suggests the mating, and then separation, which shows unity in diversity. It goes to show that every being has an individuality. The ‘urge’ is in all, whether in the learned or the illiterate, in animals or in superior animals. He uses the sex-symbolism to suggest the divine mystery. The ‘loving bed-fellow’ is compared to God; the poet’s encounter with ‘the bed fellow’ is suggestive of his mystical encounter. The result is divine bliss. The poet goes on this mystic journey enjoying every minute of it to attain the inexplicable bliss. To quote James E. Miller: “Whitman’s attitude towards the senses constitutes the basic paradox in the poem. Whereas normally the mystical state is acknowledged only through a mortification of or escape from the senses, the poet of Song of Myself asserts that it is through transfigured senses that he reaches mystical consciousness. Thus the celebration of the body is another important facet of the ‘I’ protagonist of the poem. It will play countless variations on the body-theme, develop it into a conscious program and sing the body electric in the teeth of false moralities and prudish abstractions. The injunction of the traditional mystic for weaning sell from distractions of the senses is reversed, and the concepts of deprivation and desiccation are replaced by fullness and plenitude.”
The poet’s sexual vision correlates his mystic vision, which results in the spiritual fusion of the individual soul and the supreme
soul. He stresses the thirst of ‘urge’ - ‘the procreant urge’ - which fills the world and which is the essence of life, without which there is stagnation. Through this eternal urge, a man does find a surge towards God. That is the mystic approach of Whitman.