Sections 4-6 “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” by Walt Whitman

Part two of my reading of “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” by Walt Whitman.

Leaves of Grass editor Karen Karbiener notes about the sequence “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”:

“From its first appearance in 1856, this poem has functioned as Whitman’s definitive social statement. In 1856 it constituted a broad directive for how the country might be unified; the poem echoed many of the commands of the Preface, and actually used or modified many of its most powerful statements.”