Walt Whitman
1
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
walk undisturb’d,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never
tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own
ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
sanities!
These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and
rack’d by the war-strife,)
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain’d a certain time refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul, you give me forever
faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)
2
Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and
orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant and
endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades and lovers
by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the hand every
day!
Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of
the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away, flush’d
and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn’d ranks, young, yet very
old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons
following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as
now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem is built on contrast and reversal. In its first part, the speaker lays out a list of desires drawn from the natural world. It reads like a litany of pastoral images: the “splendid silent sun,” orchards heavy with fruit, unmown fields, trellised grapes, quiet plateaus, gardens at sunrise, a perfect wife, a perfect child. It is not an abstract wish for “peace” but a concrete craving for a particular way of living—a rural domestic life filled with Nature’s “primal sanities.” Yet even in this section, the speaker admits he is “tired with ceaseless excitement” and “rack’d by the war-strife.” The plea for simplicity and solitude rises like a cry from someone still caught in the noise and demands of the city.
The second part flips the first. It begins with a rejection: “Keep your splendid silent sun.” Everything previously asked for—fields, orchards, bees, quiet—is now dismissed. In its place the speaker names what he truly cannot leave behind: the city’s faces, streets, phantoms, eyes, women, comrades, and lovers. He longs not for repetition but for endless variation. Where the first part imagines stillness, the second part revels in movement: Broadway, soldiers marching, ships at the wharves, bars, hotels, theatres, steamers, processions, military wagons, crowds streaming endlessly. Even the wounded soldiers and the clank of muskets are folded into this hunger for urban life. The section ends not on regret but on exclamation—the life of Manhattan, with its turbulent musical chorus, is embraced as “forever for me.”
Taken together, the two parts dramatize a tension that runs through Whitman’s work: the pull between the rural and the urban, solitude and crowd, retreat and immersion. But here that tension isn’t solved neatly. The speaker seems to recognize that the life he once asked for is not the one he can actually live. In the first part he acknowledges being “enchain’d” by the city, but he also admits it “enrich’d” his soul and gave him “forever faces.” By the second part he has given up even the pretense of leaving. This isn’t simply a love song to Manhattan or a lament for lost simplicity. It is a record of inner conflict, showing how desire can turn back on itself, how the things we think we need most can be trampled by our deeper impulses.
Stylistically, the poem mirrors this conflict. The first part is measured, slow, built of long phrases with a steady rhythm, matching the calm of the natural world it describes. The second part accelerates, full of exclamations and lists, mimicking the rush of the city streets. The shift in tempo makes the reversal more than an idea—it becomes something the reader feels in the movement of the lines.
The result is a poem that is not pastoral and not fully urban but suspended between both, capturing the restless energy of someone who can imagine quiet but cannot surrender the spectacle of the crowd. In the middle of the Civil War, Whitman shows himself caught between two Americas—the agrarian ideal and the new urban nation at war—and between two versions of himself, one longing for stillness and one compelled to plunge back into the noise.