A Song
A Song - context Summary
Celebrating Comradeship and Democracy
Whitman addresses Democracy, promising to bind the American continent through fellowship and devotion to comradeship. The poem imagines unity across landscapes—rivers, lakes, prairies, and cities—grounded in a “manly” and lifelong love of companions. Presented in Leaves of Grass, it reflects Whitman’s wartime-era emphasis on national solidarity and the social bonds that sustain a democratic people rather than individual heroics.
Read Complete Analyses1 COME, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon; I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. 2 I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other’s necks; By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. 3 For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme! For you! for you, I am trilling these songs, In the love of comrades, In the high-towering love of comrades.
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