A Clear Midnight
Walt Whitman 

Well, the thing is, Mrs. Clinch keeps urging us to blog but my mind is so awfully crazed up right now with all the coming exams that I have absolutely NO clue what to even talk about [for the fear that my stress will overcome me - it is probably safer I keep quiet]. While pondering over what to blog about, I decided to write about some poetry, as we'll probably be encountering quite a bit of that during our exam. When I came across this poem, it was rather soothing to imagine, and I was automatically calmed down. SO now I'm rather excited to continue on with this blog! 

Here is the poem: 

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, 
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, death, and the stars. 

In this poem, Walt Whitman treats his Soul as an individual; a being within himself. His soul seems to serve as a metaphor for his inner desires and longings. The speaker of this poem years to get away from "books" and "away from art." This gives the sense of separating oneself from the world, perhaps into a state of peace and contentment. I interpreted this idea of separating oneself as a period of deep reflection or thought, perhaps sleep, or even death. The inner part of the speaker years to spend time doing nothing but being silent, spending time "gazing" and "pondering" about the themes that he desires. Yet the poem has a bittersweet tone to it - perhaps the speaker is unable to do the things he desires due to his external world. "Books" and "art" can serve as metaphors for pursuing knowledge within the outer world. The speaker's life has become all about continuing his studies, pursuing knowledge, and learning "lessons" day after day - but these lessons only go to a certain depth. After a certain point, the speaker's internal self wants nothing more than to reflect on what is inside him. This whole idea of the dual nature of man is a big theme in this poem, both an intimate and personal theme, the duality in the nature of the individual is one I myself can relate to very much. Perhaps Whitman is urging the individual to find time to look within their artistic self - the part of them that is not present in their typical daily lives. 

At the same time, this poem seemed to be a very interesting metaphor in which Whitman paints a portrait of death itself. Unlike the usual picture of death being painful, sudden, sad, and cruel, Whitman depicts death as a silent parting in which the individual is at peace and fully aware of his situation. When he says "This is thy hour O Soul," the speaker makes apparent that he is at peace with this transition into death. He claims that death is a time in which his Soul can fly "free" into the "wordless." The "wordless" can describe a place where there are no such things as words, or perhaps a place words could never describe. Whatever this place may be, the speaker is at peace and content with the idea of going there. Death is not a painful parting in this short poem, but rather a time in which the individual is most himself - his artistic self. Death is a time in which the individual accepts the role of Time within his life, accepts his fate, and accepts the concept of leaving his external world, and embracing his internal self.