Elements of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," by Walt Whitman

 

A steel engraving of
Walt Whitman (1803-1892)
from the 1855 edition of Leaves
of Grass

Our selection this month is "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," by Walt Whitman, from a section of his Leaves of Grass entitled "Sea Drift."  It has 183 lines, 69 of which are italicized and understood to be the song of a male mocking-bird who loses his mate.

The "characters" of the poem are:

The male bird

His mate

The boy ("when the fifth-month grass was growing")

The man ("out of the Ninth-month midnight")

The lost mate of the male bird

An "old crone"

The sea

The four "light-green" eggs!

One approach to making sense of the poem is to examine the interplay of these elements.