“I Sing the Body Electric” Introduction

• "I Sing the Body Electric" is a poem from the American writer Walt Whitman's magnum opus, Leaves of Grass. In this poem, a speaker sings the praises of the human body. The body, he says, is nothing less than a miracle: wonderful beyond description, it gives people their own distinct identity and connects them to every other person alive. To have a body, this speaker proclaims, is to be a part of a beautiful, ordered, and joyful universe. Whitman first published Leaves of Grass in 1855, and he would revise and revisit it many times before his death in 1892; the version of the poem this guide examines comes from the 1867 edition.

• Read the full text of “I Sing the Body Electric”

“I Sing the Body Electric” Summary

• 1

  I sing the praises of the electric body. I'm surrounded by mighty crowds of the people I love, and I surround them, too. They won't release me until I follow them, answer them, purify them, and fill them up with the electric current of the spirit.

  Has anyone ever doubted that people who do harm to their bodies are disguising something true about themselves? Or that those who do harm to living people are just as bad as people who desecrate dead bodies? Or that the body is just as important as the soul? Because if the body isn't the soul itself, what is the soul at all?

  2

  There's no way to describe what it's like to love a man's or a woman's body. There's no way to even describe the body itself! Men's bodies are perfect, and women's bodies are perfect.

  There's no way to describe the way a person's face expresses their personality. But a well-built man's expression isn't just in his face: it's also in his arms and legs, and, strangely, in the way his hips and wrists bend. It's in the way he walks, the way he holds his neck, the bending of his waist and his knees. Clothes don't conceal this kind of expression: its powerful loveliness comes right through the rough fabric of the man's outfit. Watching him walk by reveals just as much wisdom as the greatest poem can—or maybe even more. You hang around to watch his back, and the back of his neck, and the sides of his shoulders.

  The relaxed pudginess of babies, women's breasts and heads, the way women's dresses hang, the way they look as we go past each other in the street, the curves of their lower bodies; the naked swimmer in the pool, whom I see as he moves through the shining green water, or as he floats on his back and lets the water rock him; the back-and-forth movement of rowers, the horseback rider astride his horse; young girls, mothers, and housekeepers, all doing the characteristic things they do; the workers sitting down to their lunchboxes at noon while their wives wait for them; the woman calming a crying child, the farmer's daughter on her land; the young man hoeing a field of corn, the coachman steering a six-horse sleigh through busy streets; two young hearty wrestlers having a friendly grapple in a vacant lot after work, with their coats and hats thrown to the ground, showing affection and strength in their wrestling, grabbing each other above and below, with their hair falling into their eyes; firemen with their muscles showing through their uniforms, returning from fighting a fire only to attentively listen as the fire-bell rings again; all these different, beautiful ways of holding one's body—with one's head bent down, one's neck curved—and me counting all these different ways of being: I love all of these. I let go of my own identity and freely inhabit each of these people, nursing with the baby, swimming with the swimmers, wrestling with the wrestlers, marching with the firemen. And I stop to listen to their sounds, and count all their different ways of being.

  3

  I once knew a guy—just a regular farmer, who had five sons. And the sons of his sons will one day have sons, and those sons will have sons, too.

  This farmer was amazingly strong, calm, and beautiful. His well-formed head, his pale blonde and white hair and beard, his profound and eloquent black eyes, his wonderful way of being in general—I used to go visit him to enjoy all these parts of him. He was also a wise man. He was six feet tall, older than eighty, and his sons were all huge, clean, healthy, masculine men. His sons and his daughters all loved this old man; everyone who met him loved him, not just because they thought they should, but because they really felt connected to him. He only ever drank water, and his face was flushed with health through his brown skin. He used to love shooting and fishing; he'd go out sailing alone on an excellent boat a boatbuilder had made for him. People who loved him had given him bird-hunting guns, too. When he and his sons and grandsons went out hunting or fishing, anyone would have said he was the most handsome and strongest of them all. You'd just want to be near him: you'd want to sit next to him in the boat so you could touch him.

  4

  I've come to understand that being with people I like is all I need. It's enough for me to get to relax among my friends in the evenings; to sit among lovely, thoughtful, inquisitive, delighted human bodies; to walk among living people and touch them, or embrace them just for a moment—why is this so wonderful? I don't need anything more than this pleasure: it's as deep as the ocean, so deep I swim in it.

  There's something about being close with people and looking at them, touching and smelling them, that makes the human soul very happy. Everything makes the soul happy, but this makes the soul especially happy.

  5

  Here is the female body. From top to bottom, it breathes out a holy glowing cloud. It's powerfully, irresistibly magnetic. I'm attracted to its magic breath as if I were just a wisp of gas myself: I forget about everything but myself and the woman's body. Every scrap of human thought, effort, and belief—including any thought of an afterlife—gets burnt away by my attraction. Wild, uncontrollable little sprigs and tendrils shoot out of that cloud, and I respond just as uncontrollably. A woman's hair, her breasts, the bending of her legs, her carelessly moving hands, all become vaporous, like my body. With a pulsing rhythm, genitals swollen and aching with pleasure, I overflow in an endless orgasm. Male myself, I feel like night fading into the female dawn that lies moving enthusiastically beneath me, merged with her as her body sweetly holds me.

  This is the center of things: women have babies, and so men come from women. Sex is the pool from which life emerges, the mixture of the tiny and the huge, and the connection between the inner and the outer.

  Don't be ashamed of your sexuality, women: your bodies' gifts embrace all gifts and give birth to all gifts. Your body is the gateway through which bodies come, and thus the gateway through which souls come.

  The female body contains everything there is and balances it all. She is exactly where she should be, and is in equilibrium. She conceals what she contains; she is both a receiver and a doer; she will give birth to girls as well as boys, boys as well as girls.

  When I see the shape of my own soul reflected in the natural world around me; when I see, through a fog, a unified Being of unspeakable wholeness, wisdom, and beauty, with its head bent and its arms crossed over its chest—it's a female figure that I envision.

  6

  But the man's body isn't more or less a soul than the woman's is. He's also exactly where he should be; he also contains everything; he's full of energetic force; he's full of the lively color of our understanding of the universe. Anger suits him, and so do hunger and resistance. Huge, untamed feelings of ultimate delight and misery suit him; pride is a good look for him. A man's complete, rich pride is soothing to see. Wisdom suits him; he likes to know things and tests what he learns against his own instincts. Whatever he investigates, whatever metaphorical seas he sails, he finally measures truth only by his inner knowing: how else could he measure truth?

  Men's bodies are holy, and women's bodies are holy. It doesn't matter whose body it is, it's still holy. Is it the lowliest of a motley bunch of working men? Is it a confused-looking immigrant just stepping off the boat? Every one of them has a right to be here—or anywhere!—exactly as much as the wealthy, and exactly as much as you, reader. Each person has their own sacred place in the long ceremonial parade.

  (Everything is a ceremonial parade: the universe itself is a ceremonial parade proceeding at an even, perfect pace.)

  What makes you think you're so smart, that you can call even the lowliest person foolish? Do you think that you have the right to a particularly pleasant position in the world and that other people don't have the right to a position at all? Do you think that existence emerged, and that the dirt lies on the ground, and that water flows and plants grow, only for you, and not for other people?

  7

  There's a man standing on the auction block. (You see, before the Civil War, I used to go to the slave market to watch the sales.) I'll help the auctioneer out: that careless guy doesn't know what he's doing.

  Gentlemen! Behold this amazing miracle. Whatever you bid, you can never bid enough for this man's astonishing body. The earth went through whole epochs without life to prepare to welcome this man; the cycles of the planets and the seasons went round and round to create him.

  In his head, there's the flabbergasting miracle of the brain; in his brain, and in his body beneath his brain, the material that will make generations of heroic descendants.

  Look at his arms and legs: whatever color the flesh, they're amazingly wrought, with ingenious musculature and nerves. Those limbs will stand naked here so that you can appreciate them.

  This man has beautifully crafted senses, eyes full of energetic life, spirit, willpower; plates of chest muscle, a flexible spine, tight and healthy flesh, well-proportioned limbs—and there are yet more amazing things inside him.

  Inside him, there's blood—blood exactly the same as yours, as red and as swift! And inside him, there's a beating heart, full of strong feelings, wishes, hopes, and dreams. Do you think he doesn't have those just because he doesn't have access to fancy salons and universities?

  And this man isn't just one man. He's the father of sons who will be the fathers of sons. He's the generation point of whole vast and noble countries, the ancestor of an infinity of eternal lives, uncountable numbers of human bodies who will take pleasure in life.

  Who knows what amazing people might be among his descendants in the centuries to come? And who do you think you might find out your own ancestors were, if you could look back through history?

  8

  And here's a woman standing on the auction block. She's also not just one person: she's the fertile mother of daughters who will be mothers, and the mother of sons who will be fathers.

  Have you ever loved a woman's body? Have you ever loved a man's body? Can't you see that all bodies are loved, and connected, in just the same way in every time and place?

  If anything in the world is holy, it's the human body. And the crowning glory of a man is his unblemished masculinity. And for either a man or a woman, a healthy, strong, muscular body is lovelier than even the prettiest of faces.

  Have you ever seen a man who's blemished his own living body? Or a woman who's done the same thing? They don't hide themselves: they can't hide themselves, they're marked.

  9

  Oh, my own body! I can't abandon other bodies like you or any part of you. I believe that all bodies are connected to the triumph or failure of the soul (and, in fact, that the body is the soul). I believe that all bodies will triumph or fail just like my poems—and that bodies are my poems. My poems are made for every single kind of person, and for all their complex bodies: their heads, necks, hair, ears, and eardrums; their eyes, eyelashes, irises, and eyelids that open and close; every part of their mouths and jaws; their noses, with each nostril and the cartilage in between; their cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, the back and arch of their necks; their buff shoulders, masculine beards, shoulder blades, and prominent chests; every part of their arms, wrists, hands, fingers; their wide chests, chest hair, chest-bones, and their sides; their ribs, bellies, and spines; their strong hips with rounded muscles, their testicles and penises; their muscular thighs, holding up their torsos; all the parts of their legs, feet, and toes; all the ways a person can hold themselves, all the shapes they can be, all the parts of my body, your body, or anyone's body, whether they're a man or a woman; the spongy lungs, the bag of the stomach, the healthy intestines; the wrinkly brain inside the skull; feelings, the valves of the heart and throat, sexuality, motherhood; femaleness, and everything feminine, and men who are born from women's bodies; the uterus, the breasts, the nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughing, crying, loving glances, loving feelings and responses; voices, the ability to speak, language itself, whispers, yells; food and drink, heartbeats, digestion, sweat, sleeping, walking, swimming; the body's graceful balance over the hips, jumping, lying down, hugging, wrapping your arm around someone; the constant movements of the mouth and the eyes; the skin, its tanned color, freckles, hair; the strange fellow-feeling one gets when one touches someone else's naked flesh; the spiraling, flowing motion of the breath as one breathes; the loveliness of the lower half of the body as you look down from the waist; the delicate tissues inside you and me, the skeleton and the bone-marrow; the delicious feeling of being healthy; every part of the body, I declare, is not just part of the body, but part of the soul: the body is the soul!

“I Sing the Body Electric” Themes

• 

  The Body as the Soul

  The speaker of “I Sing the Body Electric” is in delighted awe of the human body. The sheer fact that the body exists, he says, is a miracle beyond description: the body is a “perfect” phenomenon that he can’t even begin to explain. What’s more, having a body, in this speaker’s eyes, is the same thing as having a soul: embodiment is what makes people into distinct, individual beings with their own identity. In other words, bodies are what make people themselves—and the speaker believes that there’s something inherently miraculous, wonderful, and beautiful about that.

  The speaker spends much of the poem delighting in the fact that the human body exists at all. To him, the body is a work of astonishing art, and he praises it piece by piece. The poem ends with a catalog of all the body’s intricate parts, from the “head” to the innards, the “thin red jellies within you or within me.” To this speaker, the plain old existence of something as complex and lovely as the body is a wonder.

  The body isn’t just amazing because of its beauty or strength, either: it’s amazing because it gives every human being their own separate identity. Observing mothers, farm girls, swimmers, and firemen, the speaker relishes the particular qualities their bodies give them: their “vigor,” “beauty,” and “good-natured” charm. Their bodies, in other words, express their inner selves. These people’s bodies speak not just of health and beauty, but also of their characters.

  To the speaker, the body thus doesn’t just seem like a physical container for people’s souls, but like just another way of actually describing the soul: the special, indescribable something that makes every individual person who they uniquely are.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Connection Between Humanity and the Universe

  For this speaker, recognizing the miraculousness of the human body also means recognizing that every human body is a miracle. By reveling in the wonder of the body, the speaker also revels in a sense of camaraderie and connection with every person in the world—and with the universe itself. Merely by existing, the speaker says, people are intimately linked to everything else that exists.

  Simply having a body reminds people that they’re just like everyone else, part of the same amazing phenomenon called life. And since every person has one of these incredible bodies, everyone is connected and related, playing an equal part in the miracle that is existence. Bodies serve as a reminder, the speaker says, that every person “belongs” on earth, no matter how distant or alien a stranger might seem at first. The fact that every human has a body should thus allow every person to see every other person as equally special and important, part of a miraculous shared existence.

  The poem also suggests that there’s something lovely about the fact that bodies appear separate—that people are all distinct individuals. The fact that people have separate bodies is ironically what encourages—and, indeed, allows—people to reach out to each other. Part of the joy of existence is being “surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh.”

  By existing in a body, the speaker continues, every single person becomes part of the “procession” (or parade) that is the “universe” itself. If the universe is a “procession,” it’s one single thing made of many distinct parts, all joining together. In other words, by existing separately, people become a part of existence collectively. The body thus makes every individual human part of the mystical unity of the universe, connected to everything that is.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Beauty of Sex

  To this poem’s speaker, sex and sexuality are ways of understanding one’s place in the interwoven tapestry of humanity. Sex has the power to unite people both physically and spiritually—and also connects them to past and future generations through reproduction. For these reasons, the speaker insists, sex should never be seen as shameful: it’s a holy and miraculous thing, an experience that connects people to each other and to eternity.

  Sexual desire, the speaker says, is “ungovernable” and overwhelming, and sex unites two different bodies in one single overpowering experience, until one person is “lost” in the other. Sex is thus capable of reminding people that they’re part of a unified, shared human experience—that having a body and meeting other bodies makes them part of the universe’s beautiful “procession,” its ordered parade through time.

  The speaker also argues that the mortal human body is a vessel of immortality, of endless life, thanks to reproduction. Through sexuality and reproduction, the speaker says, every human being is linked to both the past and the future: everyone is the child of many ancestors, and may become the ancestor of many future generations of children. When, for instance, the speaker describes his visit with an old man who is “the father of five sons,” he observes that each of those sons has “in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.” Every woman, too, is the “mother of mothers.” There’s a sense here that both being a child and having children is the way that mortal people come into contact with eternity: reproduction makes people part of a grand, ongoing, and beautiful web of life.

  For all these reasons, sexuality isn’t something to hide or be ashamed of, but a sacred form of connection between everyone who has ever lived.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Evils of Slavery

  The speaker believes that there’s something inherently amazing and miraculous about the body, and that the shared experience of having a body connects all human beings to each other. This belief, in turn, leads to a powerful condemnation of slavery: because slavery treats Black bodies as lesser than white ones, it’s an affront to the sacred dignity that every person shares simply by having a body. Seeing Black bodies as mere objects to be sold, the speaker insists, is thus both a delusion and a shameful moral failing.

  First drafted in 1855, when slavery was still legal in the United States, the poem makes it clear that slavery is a deep evil. If every human body is equally sacred, the speaker suggests, slavery is in fact absurd: it’s based on a false distinction between Black bodies and white bodies, a difference that simply doesn’t exist.

  In an ironic passage, the speaker volunteers to “run” a slave auction: describing the Black man and woman on the block, he presents them as mindboggling marvels, a culmination of “quintillions of years” of the universe’s efforts. The enslaved people, like everyone else, have majestic bodies, “life-lit” and full of “passions”; their bodies, like everyone else’s, are part of the universe’s eternal “procession,” containing future generations and “rich republics.” It’s an affront to this deep truth, the speaker suggests, to treat these people like objects to be bought and sold. No possible bid can be “high enough” to purchase a miraculous human life.

  Slavery, the speaker goes on, is an affront to all humanity, precisely because all of humanity is connected and related. Those who participate in the slave trade thus don’t just do deep injury to enslaved people, they “corrupt” their own bodies. Failing to see that the human body is a point of connection that links us all, the white enslavers can’t understand that abusing one person means abusing all people, themselves included. Slavery, the speaker says, is thus a matter for deep and enduring shame.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “I Sing the Body Electric”

• Lines 1-4

  I sing the body electric,
  The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
  They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
  And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

  "I Sing the Body Electric" begins with a crackle of energy. As the speaker proclaims, "I sing the body electric," there's a sense of both excitement and mystery: it seems as if this poem will be a "s[o]ng" of praise. But what exactly is the "body electric" it'll be praising?

  That line might have felt even more striking when this poem was first written in the 19th century—when people were only just starting to harness electricity:

  • Nowadays, electricity has connotations of sparkling, lively, vibrant, and potentially dangerous energy (think of how people will sometimes use the word "electricity" to describe sexual attraction). But for this poem's original audience, electricity might also have felt novel, inventive, and astonishing. Whitman's first readers wouldn't have thought of electricity as a utility bill, but as a just-barely-contained force of nature: more lightning than lightbulb!
  • Electricity might also have been seen as a force that could bring things to life. Only a few decades before this poem was written, scientists like Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta discovered that they could make dead worms wiggle and dead frogs kick by applying electrical currents to their muscles—discoveries that led many to speculate that electricity might be the key to reviving the dead (and that were a direct inspiration for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein).

  If this speaker is about to "sing the body electric," then, he's about to praise the human body as something that practically shoots sparks—something charged up with a mysterious, enlivening, and awe-inspiring force. Life itself, to this speaker, is "electric."

  He's been inspired to sing this song by "the armies of those [he] love[s]," who "engirth" (or encircle) him. He, in turn, engirths them: it seems as if he's at once surrounded by and, somehow, surrounding all these beloved people.

  There's something magical about this image, and something metaphorical about those "armies." The speaker's loved ones aren't all literally soldiers. But they feel to him like a mighty force, ready to fight for a cause. And they're both inside him and outside him. He can "engirth" them with his imagination and his affection, holding them inside himself just as they can literally hold him from the outside.

  In other words, it's as if the strength of the "love" the speaker feels for these people fills him up and gives him courage—as if, in singing this song in praise of the body, he's about to set off on an epic quest or fight a battle. Clearly, he feels that there's a cause he needs to stand up for, here.

  And the "armies" of his beloveds aren't going to let him get away with not standing up for that cause! "They will not let [him] off" until he "respond[s] to them": something about the force of their mutual love also means he has to "sing the body electric." Singing this song will also make the bodies of his loved ones even more "electric": he must "charge them full with the charge of the soul." Doing so will "discorrupt" them, purify them somehow.

  All of this suggests that this song of the "body electric" won't just be a song of delight. It will be a song about something special about the body: the way it's "charge[d]" with the soul, animated with the soul's electrical energy. Defending that belief will be an act of purification, a way to "discorrupt" the speaker's loved ones. And it will, apparently, take a good deal of courage.

  In other words: this won't just be a poem about how the body is lively, brilliant, exciting, and soulful. It'll be a poem about what that belief means, and how it should change the way that people live.

• Lines 5-8

  Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
  And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
  And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
  And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

  

  

• Lines 9-10

  The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
  That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

  

  

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• Lines 11-17

  The expression of the face balks account,
  But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
  It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
  It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,
  The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
  To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
  You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

  

  

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• Lines 18-24

  The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,
  The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle,
  Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
  The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
  The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
  The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd,

  

  

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• Lines 25-30

  The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down after work,
  The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
  The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
  The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
  The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
  The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting;

  

  

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• Lines 31-32

  Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,
  Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

  

  

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• Lines 33-40

  I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
  And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.
  This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
  The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners,
  These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
  They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
  They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,

  

  

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• Lines 38-44

  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
  They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
  They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
  He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face,
  He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
  When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
  You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

  

  

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• Lines 45-51

  I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
  To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
  To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
  To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
  I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
  There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
  All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

  

  

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• Lines 50-51

  There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
  All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

  

  

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• Lines 52-58

  This is the female form,
  A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
  It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
  I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
  Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
  Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
  Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,

  

  

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• Lines 59-63

  Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
  Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
  Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
  Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
  Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

  

  

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• Lines 64-67

  This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
  This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.
  Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest,
  You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

  

  

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• Lines 68-74

  The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
  She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
  She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
  She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.
  As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
  As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,
  See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

  

  

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• Lines 75-83

  The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
  He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
  The flush of the known universe is in him,
  Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
  The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, pride is for him,
  The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
  Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to the test of himself,
  Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes soundings at last only here,
  (Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

  

  

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• Lines 84-90

  The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
  No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang?
  Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
  Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,
  Each has his or her place in the procession.
  (All is a procession,
  The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

  

  

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• Lines 91-94

  Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
  Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?
  Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
  For you only, and not for him and her?

  

  

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• Lines 95-103

  A man’s body at auction,
  (For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
  I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
  Gentlemen look on this wonder,
  Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
  For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
  For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.
  In this head the all-baffling brain,
  In it and below it the makings of heroes.

  

  

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• Lines 104-112

  Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
  They shall be stript that you may see them.
  Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
  Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,
  And wonders within there yet.
  Within there runs blood,
  The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
  There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations,
  (Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in parlors and lecture-rooms?)

  

  

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• Lines 113-117, Between Lines 117-118, Lines 118-120

  This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns,
  In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
  Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.
  How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?
  (Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?)
  8
  A woman’s body at auction,
  She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
  She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

  

  

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• Lines 121-128

  Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
  Have you ever loved the body of a man?
  Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?
  If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
  And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
  And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful than the most beautiful face.
  Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body?
  For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

  

  

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• Lines 129-132

  O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
  I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
  I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
  Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,

  

  

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• Lines 133-147

  Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
  Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
  Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
  Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
  Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
  Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,
  Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
  Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,
  Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
  Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
  Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
  Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
  Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
  Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
  All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female,

  

  

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• Lines 148-162

  The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
  The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
  Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
  Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
  The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
  The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
  Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
  Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
  The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
  The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
  The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
  The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
  The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
  The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,
  The exquisite realization of health;

  

  

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• Lines 163-164

  O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
  O I say now these are the soul!

  

  

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“I Sing the Body Electric” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  Alliteration fills the poem with music and elevates its language, helping to communicate the speaker's profound feelings of wonder, gratitude, and joy.

  The sounds the speaker emphasizes reflect his experience of the world. For instance, listen to the /s/ and /w/ alliteration in the passage where the speaker watches a swimmer:

  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,

  The repeated sounds here evoke the gentle swish of water moving around the swimmer's limbs. But these quiet sounds also give this passage a hushed, reverent feeling: it's as if the speaker is so awed by the swimmer's beauty that he has to hold his breath.

  Not too long after, the speaker reflects on all the beautiful human bodies he's been observing, and drops in an alliterative /l/:

  Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,

  Here, the long, liquid /l/ sound again evokes what the speaker is feeling and experiencing: it's a luxurious, languorous sound, and it evokes the pleasure the speaker takes in the people around him. (Note that consonance adds to the effect, with those internal /l/ sounds in "myself," "freely," and "child.")

  But this moment of alliteration also tells readers something about the speaker's philosophy. The /l/ connects his "love" to his "loosen[ing]," for instance—suggesting that, for the speaker, part of love is a feeling that he can let go of his own separate personality and inhabit other people's experiences, not just admiring but becoming that "little child."

  (Note that we've mapped alliteration only in the first two sections of the poem here—there's plenty more to find!)

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• Assonance

  

  
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• Aporia

  

  

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• Apostrophe

  

  

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• Asyndeton

  

  

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• End-Stopped Line

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

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• Anaphora

  

  

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"I Sing the Body Electric" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Engirth
• Discorrupt
• Defile
• Balks Account
• Carriage
• Broadcloth
• Fulness
• Dinner-Kettles
• Upper-hold and Under-hold
• Trowsers
• Vigor
• By Allowance
• Ship-joiner
• Fowling-pieces
• Nimbus
• Vapor
• Filament
• Ungovernable
• Shoots
• Negligent
• Diffused
• Ebb Stung By the Flow
• Limpid
• White-blow and Delirious Juice
• Delirious
• Prostrate
• Undulating
• Cleave
• Nucleus
• Tempers
• Duly Veil'd
• Conceive
• Becomes Him
• Utmost
• Strikes Soundings
• Meanest
• Cohered
• Slave-mart
• Sloven
• Quintillions
• Baffling
• Cunning
• Pluck
• Pliant
• Teeming
• Drop and Tympan
• Eye-fringes
• Partition
• Neck-slue
• Scapula
• Man-balls, Man-root
• Palate-valves
• Love-perturbations
• Articulation

• Surround, encircle.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “I Sing the Body Electric”

• Form

  Like most of Whitman's poems, "I Sing the Body Electric" is written in free verse. That means it doesn't use a regular meter or a rhyme scheme: it takes whatever shape the poet fancies in the moment! This loose, free-roaming, organic form suits the poem's exuberant mood.

  Whitman also divides this poem into nine numbered sections of all different lengths, each exploring the beauty and meaning of the human body in different ways. Most of those sections are broken down into several smaller stanzas, which reflect the speaker's evolving thoughts: a new stanza will introduce a new dimension of a section's central idea. But the final section is one long unbroken chant, and it makes it feel as if the speaker is getting swept away by his sheer enthusiasm for every part of the body he enumerates.

• Meter

  "I Sing the Body Electric" is written in free verse, which means it doesn't use meter. Instead, the lines unroll at just the pace the speaker chooses.

  Free verse sometimes sounds conversational or easy, but here, it feels pretty grand. The speaker often seems to luxuriate in long, long lines, as in lines 18-20:

  The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,
  The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle,

  The lack of a strict meter here means the speaker can spend as much time with each of these rich images as he wishes.

  He can also make short, clear statements like those in lines 68-69:

  The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
  She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,

  The poem's varied, stately pace thus lets the speaker rejoice at length over the beauty of the human body—and firmly declare the philosophical conclusions he draws from that beauty.

• Rhyme Scheme

  Written in Whitman's characteristic free verse, "I Sing the Body Electric" doesn't use a rhyme scheme. Instead of using rhyme, the poem creates sweeping patterns of sound through sonic devices like alliteration, assonance, and consonance, and through striking repetitions.

  For instance, listen to the music of the lines in which the speaker describes a swimmer:

  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,

  Here, the combination of polyptoton on variations of the word "swim," sibilant /s/ sounds, and assonant long /i/ sounds evokes exactly what it describes: the line sounds just like the repetitive, rhythmic swish of water around swimming limbs. The speaker uses sound and repetition like this throughout the poem, filling it with music and motion despite its lack of rhyme.

“I Sing the Body Electric” Speaker

• The speaker of "I Sing the Body Electric" is often read as Walt Whitman himself. Leaves of Grass, the collection from which this poem comes, is almost always written in the first person, from Whitman's own perspective.

  Whether or not the reader interprets this speaker as Whitman, he's certainly a lot like Whitman: ecstatic, exuberant, mystical, and earthy, all at once. He's as excited about the sight of some guy taking a swim as he is at the thought of the "quintillions of years" it took for the miracle of human life to emerge. In fact, he sees close links between the everyday and the divine: to him, every human body is mysteriously sacred and perfect, a single marcher in a beautiful, eternal parade.

  This speaker is not just full of passion for the human body and the beauty of existence, he's a person of conviction. His visions of human connection, for instance, lead him to take a powerful stand against slavery.

“I Sing the Body Electric” Setting

• The setting of "I Sing the Body Electric" is both the everyday 19th-century world around the speaker and the entire universe.

  When the speaker describes the people around him, he seems to be looking at folks from Whitman's own 19th-century American world. He observes workmen pausing for lunch, farm girls in their yards, women nursing babies, and young men having a friendly wrestle.

  All these images feel pretty specific, calling up a rustic setting in the countryside, a place of farms and green pools. But they also feel timeless: people have been nursing babies and eating lunch as long as there have been babies and lunches. Having a human body, Whitman's setting suggests, means being grounded firmly in one time and place—but also mysteriously connected to the past and future, to all other humans who have ever lived. This particular setting, in other words, is only one facet of the gem of existence.

  One passage, though, places this poem firmly in a time. In sections 7 and 8, the speaker visits a slave auction—an event that makes it clear this poem is set not just in the 19th-century U.S., but in the years before the 13th Amendment made slavery illegal in 1865. (In fact, in the version of the poem we're looking at here, the speaker seems to be visiting this time "before the [Civil W]ar" in memory.) The speaker's ironic "advertisement" for the enslaved man and woman on the block makes it clear that he sees slavery as a great evil: an affront to the human dignity that every living person shares.

Literary and Historical Context of “I Sing the Body Electric”

• Literary Context

  Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote "I Sing the Body Electric" around 1855 as part of his major collection Leaves of Grass. He would revise and revisit Leaves of Grass many times. "I Sing the Body Electric," for instance, didn't get the title it's known by today (or its famous first line!) until 1867.

  Whitman was a poet unlike any other. A pioneer of free verse, he struck out on his own stylistic path when most of the poets around him were still using strict meters and rhyme schemes. He was a huge inspiration to writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who shared some of his ideas about the spiritual power of nature and the holiness of the individual body and spirit. But he was also influential on a broader scale: even Abraham Lincoln approvingly quoted Whitman's poetry!

  Today, Whitman is celebrated for being a distinctly American voice, whose poetry presented a passionate vision of democracy and fellowship even in the midst of the Civil War. Along with his contemporaries Emily Dickinson and Oscar Wilde, he's also an important figure in LGBTQ literature: his erotic poetry celebrates the bodies of men and women alike.

  Historical Context

  Many of Whitman's beliefs about the holiness of the individual soul and body draw on American Quakerism, a branch of Protestant Christianity that believes every person is guided and illuminated by their own "inner light," a personal connection with God. Quakers reject elaborate church rituals and hierarchies and prefer to worship by sitting together in silence. Persecuted in England, Quakers started migrating to the American colonies in the 17th century and were an established and active religious group in the U.S. by the time Whitman was born. Many of Whitman's family members were Quakers.

  While Whitman was skeptical about organized religious groups in general, Quakerism's humanistic attitudes—and its reverence for the individual—were all deep influences on his thought. Whitman was influenced in particular by the famous Quaker thinker Elias Hicks, the leader of a progressive splinter group and a friend of Whitman's grandfather. The young Whitman was deeply impressed by hearing Hicks's sermons as a child, and he took to heart Hicks's belief that people need to look inward to come in contact with the deepest truths (and can trust their own inner knowing over any outer wisdom).

  Like Whitman, the Quakers were also staunch abolitionists; in fact, they were one of the earliest groups to collectively denounce slavery. Quakers actively campaigned against slavery on the basis that all humans carry a sacred inner light—an argument much like the one that Whitman makes in "I Sing the Body Electric."

  The abolitionist movement became especially active, important, and influential during the American Civil War: slavery was the key issue that led the southern Confederate states to secede from the northern Union states. The pacifistic Whitman was profoundly marked by this long and bloody conflict. Believing deeply in human unity, he was horrified both by the institution of slavery and by the war's appalling violence.

  Whitman's first-hand experience of slave auctions, his volunteer work in military hospitals, and his deep grief over the death of Abraham Lincoln would shape the rest of his poetic career: all this suffering only strengthened his belief in a deep, mysterious, and beautiful connection between all of humanity.

More “I Sing the Body Electric” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem's History — Read some background on the poem—and on Whitman's determination to include even the sections that made his early readers uncomfortable!

  • The Poem Out Loud — Hear the poem read aloud.

  • The Whitman Archive — Visit the Walt Whitman Archive to learn more about Whitman's work (and to compare different versions of this much-revised poem).

  • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Whitman's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.

  • Whitman's Legacy — Learn more about the history—and enduring influence—of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Walt Whitman

  • A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

  • A Noiseless Patient Spider

  • Beat! Beat! Drums!

  • Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

  • I Hear America Singing

  • In Paths Untrodden

  • O Captain! My Captain!

  • O Me! O Life!

  • One's-Self I Sing

  • The Voice of the Rain

  • When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

  • When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d