美国文学选读诗歌赏析

One’s Self I Sing

This poem was published as “Inscription”in Leaves of Grass (1867) and given its present title in 1871. According to Whitman’s plan, the poem is printed first in his book.

As the title is “One’s Self,”not “Myself”, this already forms the bond between the reader and writer which again it’s what he is conveying in the poem.

In the first stanza, the speaker sings of a simple separate person, but the alliteration lends more powerful symbolism to the words. The repetition seems to indicate that perhaps what he sings is not so simple at all. The poem celebrates the “simple, separate Person”as a physical, moral, intellectual, emotional, and aesthetical being, but declares that when he sings of himself, he uses the “word En-masse”to show that he represents the modern man. While he is one voice, he is speaking for a lot of people.

In the second stanza, the theme changes when the poet refers to the spirit and physical body, and wisdom. Whitman tells us that he speaks for all colors, classes and creeds. He seems to be telling us to live together like one, accepting all. All organs in the body need others to function properly. No person can live without relying on the complete system.

In the last stanza, the poet hammers us with alliteration. Though modern man fights for his freedom and individuality, the greatest freedom he has is his right to live.

Altough Whitman consistently celebrated an average man, he was probably feeling his unique qualities. Divided between faith in democratic equality and belief in the individual rebel against society’s restrictions, he combined the figure of the average man and the superman in his conception of himself. He certainly differed in the hypersensitivity that made him as zealous in pursuing emotional freedom through love as he had been in pursuing social freedom in democracy. He differed also in his frequent, forceful declarations of his democratic love for man (The Female equally with the Male I sing), and he has been considered a homosexual.

Fire and Ice

Desire and hate, believed by some to be the two largest faults of the human race. Robert Frost explains these two ideas in only nine lines. “Fire and Ice”is a perfect example of juxtaposition between fire and ice, or, desire and hate. Both are believed to destroy a person if they succumb to its hold.

Frost begins with saying that some believe the world will end in fire, some believe ice. In other words, some believe that those who desire too much will perish; others believe that hating so much as to put their whole self into it will have the same result. Frost did not mean that having either of these faults meant physical death, more of a death of the spirit. Those who desire things such as power or wealth soon think of nothing else and lose all touch with everything around them; those who hate never enjoy life and lose touch with what truly matters in life. With either one, the