Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is

Tuesday, April 16th, 2020. Today's poem is by Walt Whitman, and it's called O Pioneers. This is an ode to westward expansion, an ode to manifest destiny, an unabashed ode to the American spirit.

Whitman added this to his continually evolving collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, around the year 1865,

the year that the Civil War ended.

It's possible that the writing or completion of this poem, or at least its final appearance in print,

at that time, marked this renewed optimism on Whitman's part

that with the war over, this dream of spreading westward could resume.

You'll see here that for him, this movement marks a definite break with ages past and ages

to come.

He addresses both the Western youths, but also the elder races.

An address that for me often calls to mind a few lines from Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a Change.

In fact, the entirety of Dylan's song seems to capture a similar spirit a hundred years later.

Here's the stanza in question from Dylan. Come mothers and fathers throughout the land.

Don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.

Your old world is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one. You can't lend your hand. The times they are a

change in. And you will note a similar spirit throughout Whitman's O Pioneers. See what else

you note, though, the various analogies he adopts to describe both this movement westward, but also

the spirit that makes it possible and the spirit discernible in those who are going to

undergo this task, which is not an easy or always a glamorous one, though Whitman is trying hard

here in this poem to correct that latter fact. Here is, O Pioneers, Come, my tan-faced

children, follow well in order, get your weapons ready, Have you your pistols. Have you your sharp-edged

axes. Pioneers, O pioneers. For we cannot tarry here. We must march, my darlings. We must bear the brunt of

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