Walt Whitman

     While reading different poems by Walt Whitman, I decided my favorite poem by him was "This Compost." One of the reasons I enjoy reading this poem is the excellent use of tone throughout the poem. The poem begins with a very depressed, grieving tone, but changes by the end of the poem. This change in tone seems to follow the narrator's reaction to a close death. In the beginning of the poem the narrator seems quite distressed, especially in the first line, "Something startles me where I thought I was safest." The narrator's use of the word "thought " in this line, rather than a more definitive word such as knew, implies uncertainty. This, with the use of the past tense, implying that the thought no longer seems true, shows the loss of what once was very important to the narrator. This distress then seems to lead to a certain distrust. In stanzas two and three the narrator asks natural questions. These questions, including "Where have you disposed of their carcasses?" beg the question of exactly how the earth deals with death and where the dead are hidden. The questions seem to bombard the mind of the narrator until finally the narrator has a realization. In the fourth stanza the narrator has this breakthrough and says, "Behold this compost! behold it well!" It is clear that the narrator has changed his outlook on life. He realizes "That the winds are really not infectious," that he should not live in fear of death. The circle of life must include death as an integral part of it. By the end of the poem the narrator seems to be marveling at the great power of the earth and the wondrous way "it grows such sweet things out of such corruption." The narrator's lugubrious tone in the beginning of the poem became one of awe.