One Song, America, Before I Go
One Song, America, Before I Go - context Summary
Visions of America's Future
Published in Leaves of Grass, this short poem reads like a visionary farewell, addressing America’s future rather than its present. Whitman vows to plant seeds of lasting nationality, to imagine a unified body and soul, and to prepare the ways toward a true union. It expresses confident belief and preparatory work—themes typical of his later, forward-looking writing about the nation’s destiny.
Read Complete AnalysesONE song, America, before I go, I’d sing, o’er all the rest, with trumpet sound, For thee—the Future. I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality; I’d fashion thy Ensemble, including Body and Soul; I’d show, away ahead, thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish’d. (The paths to the House I seek to make, But leave to those to come, the House itself.) Belief I sing—and Preparation; As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the Present only, But greater still from what is yet to come, Out of that formula for Thee I sing.
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