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    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
    Ebook36 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535830423
    A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

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      A Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" - Gale

      14

      Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

      Walt Whitman

      1859

      Introduction

      Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking is regarded as one of Walt Whitman's finest poems. In it, the poet looks back to an incident that began at the seashore on Long Island, New York, one May when he was a boy. For several days he observed two mockingbirds in their nest and listened to their songs. Then one day the female bird disappeared, and for the remainder of the summer the young Whitman listened to the solitary song of the remaining bird, which in the poem he interprets as a lament in which the bird calls for his mate to return. As he reflects on the meaning of his boyhood experience, the adult Whitman declares that it was at this time that he realized that his destiny was to be a poet. The poem that results is a meditation on love, death, and the nature of existence.

      Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking was first published under the title A Child's Reminiscence in the New-York Saturday Press of December 24, 1859. It was included in the third edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1860, then titled A Word Out of the Sea. Whitman later revised the poem. It first appeared under its present title in 1871, and it assumed the form in which it is read today in 1881 in the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass, in the section Sea-Drift.

      Author Biography

      One of the greatest of all American poets, Walter Whitman Jr. was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, a village near Huntington, on Long Island, New York. His father, Walter Whitman Sr., was a farmer and carpenter with little education. When Walt Whitman was three, the family moved to Brooklyn, where his father speculated unsuccessfully in real estate. Whitman attended school in Brooklyn for six years and then at the age of eleven worked as an office boy in a legal firm.

      He continued to educate himself by reading in the library, including

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