The body loses feeling, the lungs shut down, and the heart pumps one last time. Throughout a human’s life, he/she is almost guaranteed to fear death. Since death is typically associated with the end of life, it is not surprising that people try to delay it for as long as possible. However, death should not always have a negative view toward it. Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” accepts the inevitability of death, knowing that it will produce a new life.
Life is meant to be spent in any form of happiness. The first scenes reveal a boy “cautiously peering, absorbing, translating”(Whitman 2) two birds sing. The boy would watch these birds every day, “never too close, never disturbing them. The boy’s joys of life is nature, as he is evidently entertained by the birds and never tries to harm them. The birds “bask [together], [...] singing all the time, minding no time”(Whitman 2). The birds represent the joy of togetherness and life since as long as they are together they fear nothing. It is because of this togetherness that entertains the boy because he enjoys watching them sing in a whimsical mood.
While the joys of life are euphoric, they, like life, never last. The female bird, unbeknownst to her partner, fails to “[return] that afternoon, nor the next, nor ever appeared again”(Whitman 3). The bird worries for his mate while the “breakers and waves of the sea, the brown-yellow, sagging moon, the land, and the rising stars--all reflect the he-bird’s dejected and despairing state” (Miller 143). The bird is inching closer to despair the longer his mate is away and nature, which loves seeing the togetherness of the birds as much as the boy, also enters a dejected state. Since the two birds were virtually one bird, losing the female-led the male to sing an “aria of lonesome love, an outpouring carol of yearning, hope, and finally, death”(Lackett, 4139). His song begins as hopeful because he is in denial of his mate’s death and yearns for her to come back. However, the bird eventually loses all hope that his mate is alive, and he can only “[sing] uselessly, uselessly all the night”(Whitman 7).
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Although the bird’s loneliness stems from his mate’s death, he has not completely lost all hope. The bird notices that the “[low-hanging moon] [...] [has a] dusky spot in [its] brown yellow [...] [in] the shape, the shape of his mate”(Whitman 5). In his ballad, he explains that although the female dies, she revives as a spirit and awaits her mate to be with her. Confident that his mate is spiritually alive, he “[hears his] mate responding to [him] [...] [faintly] [so he believes] he must be still, be still to listen [...] [with] this just sustained note [he] [announces] [himself] to [her]”(Whitman 6). The male anxiously calls on her spirit in hopes that she will hear his cries and waits on earth until his soul can be with hers on the moon. Death, in this situation, is not seen as such a terrible fate because the male is only temporarily separated from his mate and it adds a hopeful tone.
The female bird’s sacrifice and the male bird’s lament act as inspirations for the boy. Once he finishes listening to the bird’s ballad, “the boy [becomes] ecstatic [when] [...] [the] aria’s meaning, the ears, the Soul, swiftly deposit”(Whitman 7). When the boy learns of the song’s meaning, his soul is fused with the bird’s, and this “fusion, then, of his songs, the bird’s carol, and the sea’s chant is a fusion in which the soul acts as a catalyst” (Miller 141). To the boy, the bird’s soul acts as a blueprint for his future creations, since the fusion of souls allowed the two to read each other’s thoughts. Earlier the narrator hears “the sea [...] [lisp] to [him] the low and delicious word DEATH/ And again Death--ever Death, Death, Death”(Whitman 9) until the boy realizes that “the word [death] [is the] sweetest song [of] all songs”(Whitman 10). Although the bird has no will to live, the boy still has a future ahead and it is pointed out by the sea repeatedly. The word “death” is meant to show the boy that the song of death “[causes him] own songs [to awake] from that hour.”(Whitman 10).
Not only is this boy learning about his potential to become a poet, but the boy is literally a figment of the speaker’s memory. The “[boy] is ‘A man, yet by these tears a little boy again’ and he is ‘borne hither,’ back to the scene of the unforgettable boyhood experience” (Miller 138). When the speaker notices “a flock [of birds], twittering, rising, or overhead rising” (Whitman 1) he reminisces “the memories of the bird that chanted to [him]” (Whitman 1). He thanks the bird for his song because “[of] those beginning notes of sickness and love” (Whitman 1). The boy realizes that from “the growth of his mind, he sees now that the word will once and for all precipitate the meaning he has willed himself to create, and in the creating to discover” (Pearce 55). Death causes suffering, however, like life, one has to get over it and find a solution to solve it. The boy finds out that creating art is what tames suffering.
The connection between suffering and poetry reflects the theme of death forming a new life. The bird’s despair over losing his mate led him to sing a ballad of his sorrows. Since the boy was able to translate this song, he could understand the beauty of its meaning. The boy begins as a curious child simply watching two birds sing, but as the poem progresses, he begins to understand the bird and is soon able to convert the song and nature into art. The boy’s realization of his ability to translate nature and convert them into poetry, could not have been found had the female never died and the male never sang his aria. His acceptance of death’s inevitability is where the “out of” comes from in the title since the boy finds his potential in writing poems and matures through nature’s guidance.
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