SD: A Discovery of Old Age

"Perhaps the best is always cumulative. One's eating and drinking one wants fresh, and for the nonce, right roff, and have done with it -- but I would not give a straw for that person or poem, or friend, or city, or work of art, that was not more grateful the second time than the first -- and more still the third. Nay, I do not believe any grandest eligibility ever comes forth at first. In my own experience, (persons, poems, places, characters,) I discover the best hardly ever at first, (no absolute rule against it however,) sometimes suddenly bursting forth, or stealthily opening to me, perhaps after years of unwitting familiarity, unappreciation, usage."

This entry caught my eye because it was addressing old age. However, it is also addressing things about Whitman's life like his experiences with poetry. The first is not necessarily the best, in fact, as Whitman would say, never the best. This explains why Whitman decides to keep revising "Leaves of Grass" up until his death bed. The enjoyment of poetry, in a sense, is to see its evolution.

In that sense, we could read "Song of Myself" by seeing the similar motifs and how they change overtime in the poem. Things change meanings over time and other things accumulate all meanings. As Whitman says "perhaps the best is cumulative", that could also be said for meaning. "What is the grass?" is what grass has always been since the beginning of time to the present, which is "the flag of my disposition" or "the handkercheif of the lord" and etc. There is another few stanzas that really reiterate the point that Whitman was trying to make about the all encompassing "essence" of everything.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas'd the moment life appear'd

The entry perfectly illustrates the point Whitman is trying to make or vice-versa.