To Think of Time

Death is most of the time present as a negative aspect in the life of each person. Many writers have shown their point of view toward death and just a few of them as in the case of Walt Whitman, have presented the goodness and luck of death in their explanations of the eternal soul.

In the poem ‘To think of time’ he presents a different perspective of death, in which he shows the positive aspects of death. This idea is clearly expressed when he says ‘and I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed…and that there is no life without satisfaction’. Here the speaker wants to state the fact that it is very important to enjoy life in order to accept death.

The ideas of eternal soul and immortality are also present in this poem, especially when the writer says ‘I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul’ and then, in the same stanza he continues ‘I swear I think there is nothing but immortality’. Here the author highlights his beliefs that there is more important life waiting for us.

In page 55, the author starts asking the reader whether we enjoy of many aspects of our lives. He says ‘Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? Have you pleasure from poems? Do you enjoy yourself in the city?...or with your mother and sisters?...’. Here Whitman makes us think whether we appreciate the simpler facts in life that can make us feel better if we pay them a little bit of our attention.

For what I noticed in Whitman’s works, he does not use rhyming in his poems. He seems to change rhyming for alliteration and a clear example of this use of alliteration can be found in this poem. H e begin this poem ‘To think of time…to think through the retrospection, to think of today…’(Whitman page 53). With this use of alliteration Whitman lets the poem be easy to read and understand.
In this poem, Walt Whitman guides human beings through the many aspects of their lives. He thinks human beings should accept death and he lets us know clearly his beliefs in the eternal soul and immortality.

Walt Whitman’s aim was to project his works to the readers of the future and that is why he was constantly changing his works in order to make them good enough for us and I have to say that he has already accomplished such a task.