Walt Whitman

I chose Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun by Walt Whitman.  I find it easier to do these blogs when you know that they are talking about nature because both Emerson and Thoreau loved nature and it is always better to write on two writers that agree on things, rather than to disagree.  This is the last blog of the third quarter which is exciting, so I picked this poem because it is exciting and it is what I am wishing for right now.

There are two parts to the poem.  The first one being loving nature.  It says give me this and give me that (Whitman).  It is saying these things that all come out of a beautiful sunny day. It goes on and one about what they want to be given to them and things like fruit, a wife, an open field, and unending crops come up (Whitman).  I think that this can be good and bad.  For the good, I think that it can be good because they want the warm weather and the things that come with that.  Who does not want these things?  Thoreau would have loved this poem because it says of all the pros that come along with a beautiful day.  Thoreau saw it as manifest destiny (Grant).  I think that is where we can go wrong to because we are not relying on ourself to bring us all these wonderful things, we are asking and demanding for them.  We are not relying on ourselves to do the job.  In a sense we are being lazy and just sitting back and begging for these things to come to us.  In the second part of this poem, it is kind of the same way because it is saying give me this and give me that.  We are not being self-reliant upon ourselves to go out there and get what we need, we are relying on something else, where we should be doing it ourselves.

Grant, P. B. "Nature in

Walden." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of Themes in

Literature

. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL1134&SingleRecord=True (accessed January

30, 2012).

"130. Give Me the Splendid, Silent Sun. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Bartletby Bookstore. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. <http://www.bartleby.com/142/130.html>.