He imagines a college course, taught by a professor. In “The Base of All Metaphysics,” Whitman attempts to give a philosophical answer to the ideas of love and companionship that he writes about here. The questions of life and death fade away. They hold his hand and sit with him and there is a sense “that words and / reason hold not….” Whitman gains his wisdom from these moments and from this love. Whitman says that these are held near to him “by a thick cloud of spirits….” In “Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances,” Whitman speaks not of spirits but of real people, lovers with whom he travels. Whitman begins to pick up “tokens” of nature around him: a lilac, a pine branch, “some moss…pull’d off a live- / oak in Florida as it hung trailing down,” some laurel leaves and some water from the pond. Some embrace him while others stand around him.
Cities will be filled with men bonded together in “manly love.” As he wanders through the woods, Whitman can feel the spirits of his former friends beside him. His goal is to create companionship in all of America. In “For You O Democracy,” Whitman makes the connection between America, the “continent indissoluble” and the friendship of which he sings.
Instead, Whitman is decisive in his wish to “make death / exhilarating” for his comrades and fellow travelers. Whitman says, “Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer….” Death is beautiful when a man does not live his life in service to it. They are leaves of death and they are bitter, but this does not mean that death is not beautiful. In “Scented Herbage of My Breast” he ponders leaves that grow above him. He resolves to “sing no songs to-day but those of manly / attachment….” It is a celebration of his own “need of comrades.” This time is also a time of reflection on the end of life. This is a truer self than the one of the ordinary world. It is in this place that he can reflect on his inner self. Whitman begins “Calamus” in September, 1859, alone in the woods, away from all of the “pleasures, / profits, conformities” of his life.
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