(Click image for PDF of the whole novel.)
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them,
emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay
only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) …
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove
already too late? …
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the
runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the
grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under
your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
I first came across these last two stanzas in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself while reading Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is Lying: a murder mystery involving four high school students. This excerpt of the poem was read at one of the protagonist’s funeral because it was his favorite poem. I found this very interesting considering how he died: suicide. (The problem is, we don’t know it was a suicide until the end of the book. At this point in the story, he was believed to be murdered) I think that in the context of the story, these two stanzas were tools for foreshadowing the ending of the story.
Lines that really stood out to me were the following:
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
I thought these lines were important because they fully frame the story. Like we’ve discussed in class, Song of Myself mirrors what Walt Whitman thought of life. I don’t think that these two stanzas are the last two by coincidence. To me, it seems that this is Whitman’s view of death and what comes after. It’s almost like he’s speaking from a place beyond life, if that makes sense. He’s hoping for something after life. To me, this is his farewell. It’s not a permanent one, however. It’s more like a “See you later,” than an actual “Goodbye.”