Song of Myself Reflection

"1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
...

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
...

32
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
...

35
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
...
Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.
...

38
...
Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

-  Walt Whitman

This poem seems to be like a type of biography. The poet tells us about himself, his opinions, and so on, which is why it's so biography-like. The first verse is him telling us that he's going to be talking about himself. The second part with the grass, I think is his view on equality. I think he's saying that everyone is equal, through using the grass as a metaphor. The next part seems to be about what bothers him in men. He wishes he could be an animal because animals don't do or have certain qualities that make men so despicable. They don't whine, they don't regret things, they don't dwell on religion, they are not corrupt, they do not have a ruler, and they are all happy. Next, he talks about how he can answer the questions of others who are beneath him; he is a teacher of some sort. Last, he says that he is not confined by rules, he will be bold and show the world. 

The last bit was a big part in the movie, probably because it was (in a way) how the boys took "carpe diem". To be bold and to be yourself was a big part of the movie, especially with Knox, Neil, and Todd. In the end, they all sounded their barbaric yawps in their own ways.