The poem, "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," descried how a boy walking on Long Island beach hears the cry of a bird. The bird is a "visitor form Alabama," mourning his lost mate. At the beginning of the poem, Whitman "Taking all hints to use them," the descriptions were only the observation of the nature at the first. When I reached the end of the poem, the descriptions are not longer just the simply description of nature but also the spiritual realism. In transcendentalism, nature has a very important position. Many transcendentalists observed nature closely and carefully to inspire their self-reliance. Also, Whitman told us this poem was his experience in his childhood and it causes him to become a poet. .
In the following poem, the boy who was Whitman himself in youth translated the meaning of the songs that he-bird sang. The sorrowful songs reminded the boy his own unhappiness and pain. He and he-bird were on the beach listening to the answer from the sea. "Death" was the answer. Suddenly, all of unhappy experience of boy's had gone and the new he was reborn. The sea symbolized the life and the rebirth. The boy was no longer innocent. He had turned his childhood into the manhood since he understood the meaning of the death and the beauty of the death. "Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake," Whitman realized what he wanted to be and what he needed to do. This is the birth of a poet. "Never more the cried of unsatisfied love be absent from me." The death makes this life more valuable and more beautiful. This is an idea in transcendentalism, the importance of this life, not the after-life. .
The realism in this poem was the descriptions of the nature and the losing of he-bird. It is around us and happened everyday, but none of us realized the message from the sea or the nature. "The rest might not, but I have treasur"d every notes," Is the translation real or right? It might be a dream to Whitman, but I am sure that is the self-reliance to Whitman not to all of us.
