There Was a Child Went Forth

"There Was a Child Went Forth" is a poem written by Walt Whitman and included in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. In the 1856 edition, Whitman titled it, "Poem of the Child That Went Forth, and Always Goes Forth, Forever and Forever".[1] The poem was given its present title in the 1871 edition, and was included in the "Autumn Rivulets" cluster in the 1881 edition.[2][3]

The Poem

THERE was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they?
The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off,
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-tow'd astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.[4][5]

The text of the poem suggests it is autobiographical with its vivid renderings of the impressions and experiences of a growing child.[6][7] The poet presents a mixture of country and city scenes as he records his memories of early domestic life and his perceptions of the world outside.[8] Although "There Was a Child Went Forth" was not one of Whitman's longer poems, he still employed his characteristic "catalogue technique" to build a sense of progression as he describes the changing of the seasons, and the child's expanding awareness and comprehension of his surroundings.[9][10]

Some critics have interpreted the poem not just as a metaphor of a child's journey from infancy to adulthood, but also as a metaphor of "the journey of young America from embryo to world power."[11]

References

  1. ^ Bradley, Sculley; Blodgett, Harold W., eds. (1973). Leaves of Grass. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. p. 364.
  2. ^ "Cluster: Autumn Rivulets. (1891)". The Walt Whitman Archive. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
  3. ^ Aspiz, Harold (1966). "Educating the Kosmos: 'There Was a Child Went Forth'". American Quarterly. 18 (4): 655–666. doi:10.2307/2711388. ISSN 0003-0678. JSTOR 2711388.
  4. ^ "There Was a Child Went Forth". The Walt Whitman Archive. 1881 edition of the poem.
  5. ^ Bradley & Blodgett 1973, p. 364: Whitman initially appended the following last line to the poem: "And these become of him or her that peruses them now." The line was dropped in the 1867 Leaves of Grass edition.
  6. ^ Bradley & Blodgett 1973, p. 365.
  7. ^ Demirturk, E. Lale (Spring 1985). "Walt Whitman's 'There Was a Child Went Forth': The Image of 'Edges' in the Origins of Life" (PDF). Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 2 (4): 41–45.
  8. ^ Slattery, Margaret Patrice (June 1969). "Patterns of Imagery in Whitman's 'There Was a Child Went Forth'". Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. 15 (2): 112–114.
  9. ^ "Catalogues". The Walt Whitman Archive. 1998.
  10. ^ Buell, Lawrence (2016) [1973]. "Catalogue Rhetoric". Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance. Cornell University Press. pp. 172–173. ISBN 978-1501707650 – via Project Muse.
  11. ^ Tian, Junwu (2019-10-02). "Metaphor of Child Journey and America Growth in Walt Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth"". ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. 32 (4): 240–243. doi:10.1080/0895769X.2018.1543575. ISSN 0895-769X. S2CID 166191402.
  12. ^ "There Was a Child Went Forth: I. There Was a Child – song and lyrics by Joel Puckett". Spotify. December 19, 2023.
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