Night on the Prairies
Night on the Prairies - meaning Summary
Cosmic Humility at Night
Whitman’s poem depicts a solitary night on the prairie where the speaker, amid sleeping emigrants and a dying campfire, confronts vastness and mortality. The starlit scene expands his sense of self into cosmic time: other worlds, alternate lives, and the promise of revelations beyond day. He accepts that life cannot show everything now and that death will disclose further meaning, prompting humility and a renewed, expansive imagination.
Read Complete AnalysesNIGHT on the prairies; The supper is over—the fire on the ground burns low; The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets: I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized before. Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death, and test propositions. How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé! The same Old Man and Soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content. I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not-day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes. Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will measure myself by them; And now, touch’d with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as those of the earth, Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them, than I ignore my own life, Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive. O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me—as the day cannot, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
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