Voices
Voices - meaning Summary
Power of the Spoken Voice
Whitman celebrates the spoken voice as the supreme creative force. He insists every word is "beautiful" in its place, and that the right voice can move him effortlessly, like water following the moon. He imagines language waiting for a perfected organ or developed soul whose utterance awakens deeper, previously dormant sounds and meanings. Until that voice arrives, minds and mouths remain closed and receptive potential stays unstruck.
Read Complete AnalysesNOW I make a leaf of Voices—for I have found nothing mightier than they are, And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place. O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe. All waits for the right voices; Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? Where is the develop’d Soul? For I see every word utter’d thence, has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms. I see brains and lips closed—tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering, forever ready, in all words.
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