Walt Whitman's "On the Beach at Night Alone"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2021
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Walter Whitman (/ˈhwɪtmən/; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.[1]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today's Tuesday, June 1st, 2021. Thanks for bearing |
| 0:06.6 | with us last week as we had a few days off, just had a bunch of things come up and you know how it goes. |
| 0:12.6 | But we're back this week with more poems for you. It's June. I'm going to have a lot of summer poems, |
| 0:19.0 | a lot of poems by poets who had birthdays over this |
| 0:22.4 | stretch of time. And really excited to be bringing some of these poems to you. Today's poem is by an |
| 0:27.5 | American poet who was born on May 31st. So yesterday was his birthday. It would have been his |
| 0:33.3 | 2002nd birthday because Walt Whitman was born May 31st, 1819. He then died in March of 1892. |
| 0:43.7 | You probably know that he was one of the transcendentalists and is one of the foremost, one of the |
| 0:48.5 | most influential poets in all of American letters. He was an essayist as well and a journalist and is |
| 0:54.0 | known by many people |
| 0:56.0 | for his journals themselves. I know of a couple of writers and scholars who think that his best |
| 1:01.9 | writing of all are his nature journals. Of course, he is known for the very famous poem, |
| 1:07.9 | Oh, Captain, My Captain. But the one that I'm going to read today is much shorter, which is a lot of his poems are very long. Let's just say that. But the poem that I'm going to read today is called On the Beach at Night Alone. So for those of you who are getting ready to go to the beach this summer, you know, one to think of while you're staring out of the waves. It goes like this. |
| 1:29.4 | On the beach at night alone, |
| 1:32.0 | as the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, |
| 1:37.0 | as I watched the bright stars shining, |
| 1:40.5 | I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. |
| 1:48.1 | A vast similitude interlocks all, all spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, |
| 1:58.0 | all distances of place, however wide, all distances of time, all inanimate forms, all distances of place however wide, all distances of time, all inanimate forms, |
| 2:04.9 | all souls, all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds. |
| 2:11.5 | All gaseous, watery, vegetable mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, all nations, colors, barbarism, |
| 2:20.3 | civilizations, languages, all identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, |
... |
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