Lessons

Lessons - meaning Summary

Teaching Readiness for Hardship

Whitman contrasts conventional instruction in comfort with a harsher pedagogy: he tells loved ones not tender reassurances but lessons of war and death. The speaker argues such teaching prepares them to face inevitable threats and upheavals with readiness, treating hardship as something to confront rather than avoid. The poem reframes care as preparation for adversity rather than shelter from it.