Long, Too Long America

"Long, Too Long America" is a poem from the "Drum-Taps" section of Walt Whitman's book "Leaves of Grass." The poem was written about the soldiers from the Civil War and their return from war after the tragic war. Whitman had a history of being a nurse to soldiers who were wounded in the Civil War. His brother was wounded in the Civil War and he went to find him and comfort him in his time of need. Instead he found hundreds of wounded soldiers who were in agony and he comforted them as best he could. Doing this he forged a great bound with the men at arms and was greatly drawn to their struggle and their sacrifices.

LONG, too long America,

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grap- pling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?) As Oliver wrote, "He has experienced firsthand the bravery of the soldiers both North and South, and he is writing these poems in order to describe the significance of what he has learned." This poem showed the great respect and regard that Whitman held for the men in arms and very little symbolism is used throughout. The main symbol behind the poem is the concept of the everyman and Whitman uses this concept to give the men in the poem character and have the reader emphasize with them. He wrote of the selflessness of the soldiers and the the struggle that America went through. As Oliver wrote

For too long the speaker says in this five-line poem, America has been satisfied with its "joys and prosperity," but now that the Civil War has begun—this "crises [crisis] of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not"—we must "show to the world what your children enmasse really are." The children enmasse are the soldiers returning from war and they are tired from their battle-hardened struggles. They have suffered through hell and back and have come back as weak men who had seen the end of their ropes. They went off to war as boys looking for a thrill and going to seek the glory of war. Whitman saw through this and knew that after the war the boys would be weak and unfit to do anything else.

There are no uses of symbolism in this work as evidenced in Whitman's earlier works, but the message and thought behind the poem are the same as his usual works. He uses the concept of the everyman but there are no mentions of self or relating religion and spirituality into his work. The message of the poem is to pay tribute to those disheartened souls that suffered through the tragic battlegrounds of the Civil War and there own minds to an extent.

Oliver, Charles M. "'Long, too Long America'." Critical Companion to Walt Whitman: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCWW257&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 7, 2011).

Whitman, Walt. "LONG, TOO LONG AMERICA. (Leaves of Grass [1891-1892])." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 07 Mar. 2011. .