Post 10

“The night in silence under the stars,

The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,

And the soul turning to thee O vast well-veil’d death,

And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,

Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.”

This quote from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Witman describes the varying emotions you feel or you feel over someone else who has died or is about to die. Death is defined by Webster as a permanent cessation of all vital functions : the end of life. I believe Witman attempts in the poem to go through the process of the end of life with his readers. Not by any means is death easy, not for the one dying nor the one who is close with the one dying. Yet death is an inevitable part of life. I can’t help but think how ironic it is that from the earth God created us from and by the earth we are buried into. This poem reminds me of how we cannot avoid death, even if we are living. In this world people are dying all around every couple of seconds in fact yet we continue to live as if life has not left. As I quoted earlier Witman says, “The night in silence under the stars, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know” I believe this statement has double meaning. I think Witman was suggesting that not only do we long for those who have left this world through death. But we on earth are waiting for death because it is inevitable. And that death is the voice that we know, whether were alive or already gone the voice of death is always familiar.