Walt Whitman

Earth! My Likeness!

Earth! My Likeness! - meaning Summary

Kinship with the Earth

The speaker addresses Earth as a kindred presence, noting an outward calm that hides intense vitality. He senses a mutual attraction—an almost erotic or athletic kinship—between himself and the planet, but also a dangerous, explosive force within both. That power feels too extreme to be fully named or expressed, even in poetry. The short poem registers wonder, identification, and a restrained fear of an unleashed energy.

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EARTH! my likeness! Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth; For an athlete is enamour’d of me—and I of him; But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth, I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs.

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