Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

The ability to pinpoint the birth or beginning of the poet lifestyle is rare. It is rare for the observer as it is for the writer. The Walt Whitman poem “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” is looked at by most as just that. It is a documentation, of sorts, of his own paradigm shift. The realities of the world have therein matured his conceptual frameworks. In line 147 we read “Now in a moment I …

…of the combined elements of time (maturing) and space (the surroundings) he transcends all dimensional plains to truly understand nature. The Sea against the shore is the “cradle endlessly rocking”, also the death of innocence. Him realizing the birth of poet is his assent past this truth (“From”). Life and death are not the bookends to our existence, but points in an endless cycle. To this death there is a birth, the birth of spirit.