When I heard at the close of the day
It is hard to write about being happy; most poems thrive on tension, conflict, and lack. Whitman succeeds by opening with a puzzling portrait of unhappiness: we wonder why he was not pleased to carouse, receive plaudits, and accomplish his plans. He does not tell us exactly why; instead, he tells about a time when he was happy. He stages the revelation slowly. At first, he is alone on the beach – healthy, singing, and completely in tune with nature: swimming naked in the ocean, “laughing with the cool waters,” and “inhaling the ripe breath of autumn.” We know from previous Calamus poems that solitude can be miserable when it comes from being spurned. This solitude is joyful because Whitman is expecting his dear friend, his lover; that makes each breath sweeter, each bite of food more nourishing. And in the poem’s final lines, he paints a picture of still greater happiness: to lie awake with the one he loves sleeping beside him. His breast is now the site not for “tomb-leaves,” as in the second poem, or raging sighs, as in the sixth poem, but for a lover’s arm.
An idyll cannot feel idyllic unless it also feels fragile. In addition to contrasting his happiness with his mysterious dissatisfaction, Whitman creates two other forms of dramatic tension. The word “hissing” subtly introduces the serpentine connotations of sin, shame, and betrayal that he will pick up in the next poem (when he says, “O let some past deceived on hiss in your ears”). Also, the lover is shown only when he is asleep – not talking, swimming, eating, or kissing the poet. Perhaps the happiest situation for Whitman is to be with the one he loves and yet alone with his thoughts, free to absorb nature and love in solitary reflection, free from the burdens of conversation and sex. In other poems, he strongly associates night, sleep, silence, and ocean with death. Perhaps part of the reason he shows the lover only silent and asleep is discretion regarding the homoerotic. But Whitman sees many ties between love and the “big sleep” – death – and he is keenly aware of time’s predations. He celebrates the “ripe breath of autumn.” Fruit is most beautiful, delicious, and nutritious when it is ripe; but ripe fruits fall from trees; and every autumn is a kind of fall. To end the poem “And that night I was happy” suggests that this beautiful happiness did not last forever, or even very long.
In an earlier draft of the poem, Whitman wrote “For the friend I love lay sleeping by my side” instead of “For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night.” “Under the same cover” adds a specific, visual image. The sound of “cover” rhymes nicely with “love.” The covering also adds a slight sense of concealment and secrecy to the scene, as Whitman both summons and veils the homoerotic implications.