As I Lay with Head in Your Lap
As I Lay with Head in Your Lap - context Summary
Civil War-era Voice
Written within the Leaves of Grass milieu, this poem frames Whitman as a defiant, restless speaker who describes his words as "weapons" and himself as a soldier not of bayonet but of conscience. It addresses the poet’s commitment to unsettle settled laws and to urge companions onward without knowing the outcome. The tone reflects Whitman’s democratic individualism and his wartime self-conception as a moral and civic combatant.
Read Complete AnalysesAS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume: I know I am restless, and make others so; I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death; (Indeed I am myself the real soldier; It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;) For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them; I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me; I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule; And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me; And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me; ...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination, Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.
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