Similarly, Walt Whitman unites nature and humanity through the use of the transcendental “I” in “Song of Myself”. The poetic voice celebrates universal harmony, focusing on both the minute and the cosmic. The expansive persona identifies within himself “the poet of the body” and “the poet of the soul”, addressing the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of humanity. Whitman also writes “the pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me”. The parallel structure, featuring firstly the subject of pleasure and later pain, acknowledges that without the “pains of hell” one would not be able to fully appreciate the “pleasures of heaven”. Within a stanza, Walt Whitman combines the personal and the universal, creating a balance, achieved when one is appreciative of the beauty of variation and contrasts.
Hopkins also describes variation, in the form of colour tones and texture, showing how contrasts and variety increase the richness of ones surroundings. The mention of “fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” introduces the principle of the plain exterior and the deeper, internal significance. Through the description of the firecoal, the idea of a richness imprisoned within allows Hopkins’ reader to consider the deeper value of all creation. The image transcends the physical face value, and Hopkins implies that the physical links to the spiritual and meditates on this dual relationship, leading to a deeper appreciation of beauty.
Walt Whitman emphasizes the power and beauty of nature, declaring that humanity, represented by the human title of “president” “is a trifle”. He continues to personify the night as “tender and growing”, further bestowing titles to the night such as “night of south winds- night of the large few stars”. The musical quality through Whitman’s extensive use of repetition and rhythm is reflected through his accurately composed sentences. Throughout the extract of the poem, Whitman’s sentences are rich with a variety of sounds and punctuated with exclamation marks to heighten his moment of epiphany as he fully integrates himself within his natural surroundings. The mortality of humans is projected onto the Earth as he personifies the earth to bear the same characteristics that render humans mortal. From “O Voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!”, to “Earth of departed sunset and earth of limpid grey of clouds brighter and clearer”, alluding to the ageing process typical of humans. However, Walt Whitman implies in his poem that although ageing is perceived to be ‘dark mottling’ and ‘grey’, wisdom comes with age, and so the earth after a passage of time is in fact “brighter and clearer for my sake!”, implicative of a hidden beauty underneath the “dark mottling tide” of time.
Just as Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” has musical qualities, Hopkins creates equally beautiful sounds within his poem, drawing parallels to the subject of “God” creating pied beauty. Within “Pied Beauty” Hopkins use of sound is evident in his sentences. “Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings” alliterates several times and beauty of the neologism in Hopkins’ compounded words such as “Fresh-firecoal” is allowed to be appreciated by the reader. Gerard Manley Hopkins also creates a rhetorical question “Who knows how” in which the vowel ‘o’ is pronounced differently. The beauty of the different pronunciations in language is further enhanced by the anonymous nature of ‘who’, targeting a universal response from all. The musical repetition of sounds throughout the poem such as “dappled and stipple, tackle and fickle” reflects the creative act the poem glorifies, the intertwining of diverse beings into a beautiful whole.
Through the poems “Pied Beauty” and “Song of Myself” the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Walt Whitman have presented to the reader different ways of appreciating beauty, linking back to the common theme of beauty. By the end of the poems, the reader is allowed to further explore the nature of beauty and the harmony between all that it results from.
