Comparing Walt Whitman's Song To Myself

Walt Whitman composed different versions of “Song to myself”, but 1881 is when the work was titled. Walt Whitman was born in 1819, lived in New York and New York city his whole life before dying in 1892. He was a big celebrator of humanity and believed in physical and spiritual essence. The overall meaning from “Song to Myself” was the poem progressing from life to death in a way that showed death is inevitable and should be embraced as an old friend. In a similar theme, Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was composed in 1922, and talked about death as an escape from responsibilities rather than Whitman’s take as death being an old friend.

Robert Frost composed “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in June of 1922, after he wrote the poem “New Hampshire,” he went outside his home in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and had the idea for “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Frost’s poem has multiple meanings, but the

Whitman expresses a lot of fear regarding death in relation to religion or god, whereas Frost uses death as an escape from everyday problems. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Frost writes “Between the woods and frozen lake, the darkest evening of the year…The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep” (739). I took this as, death looks like a promising escape, but he has responsibilities that need tending to, “And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep” (739). In “Song to Myself,” Whitman writes “And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of morality, it is idle to try to alarm me” (65),” It is not chaos or death-it is form, union, plan-it is eternal life-it is Happiness” (66). I took this as Whitman embracing death as inevitable and as something that is nothing to worry yourself with, because in the end it’ll happen, and when it does, you should look at it as