Brooklyn Ferries and Songs of Tradition

       Walt Whitman wrote many poems within Leaves of Grass and other books of his. Within poems from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," he described the beauty that man sees, makes, and is a part of in Brooklyn and Manhattan Island. He addressed Emerson's claim that beauty and truth is found in Nature by making man part of Nature. Because truth can be found in man, it can also be found in what man makes. In "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," Whitman shows that beauty isn't found in man trying to make Nature understandable by his own terms; he wrote "When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,/ How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick" (Whitman 6).

Instead, man can watch Nature in awe and find beauty in things like fire and smoke from a man-made chimney; man and Nature work together to be beautiful in the presence of each other.

       In the seventeenth poem found in "Song of Myself," Whitman described his thoughts as not original.  The first line of the poem argues a similar statement to that of T. S. Eliot in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Eliot explained that tradition isn't conforming poetry to the form of other poets' poetry   or to write in a similar style. Tradition is writing about some truth known to all in a way that has never been written before. Whitman continued summarized Eliot's tradition in one line: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me" (Whitman 11). In his poems, Whitman writes about the thoughts that have been thought by all, but they are expressed in original ways.

What is the meaning of "Song of Myself: 1"? It seems to have no connection from stanza to stanza.