This Specimen Days entry is essentially a long list of birds that Whitman sees during this interval of time during spring. He writes that it is remarkable how many different species there are and how beautiful it is when all these different types of birds are all chirping at the same time.
And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
These lines really emphasize that admiration. Their complex simplicity, or should I say, freedom from the shackles of something like a human consciousness, is what makes animals majestic and inspiring in their own right. Man is always wondering at the point of his existence, and Whitman turns to birds to know that there really is no purpose in finding a purpose because the purpose was always there to begin with... or else we wouldn't really be alive now would we?
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