The prairie-grass dividing
Whitman, writing in Brooklyn, imagines himself walking through the Great Plains, dividing the prairie-grass and inhaling its scent, and then uses those blades of grass as an image for what he wants American men to be.
“The prairie-grass dividing” is weaker than most Calamus poems because it lacks their uncanniness, ambiguity, and tension. In expressing a familiar theme in a familiar style, Whitman does not surprise himself. One clue that Whitman is voyaging into didactic territory is the locale of the poem. Most of his best work reflects the places where he spent the most time: Long Island and New York City. When he starts talking about the Midwest and West, it is often a clue that his desire to be a national bard has taken over.
Similarly, it is revealing that he is leaving behind floral symbols like calamus and scented herbage and returning to blades of grass. The image makes sense at first, when he imagines American men as copious and close as prairie grass, but it gets strained when he imagines grass blades stepping and looking. While he demands that the grass symbolize companionship, in reality grass blades resemble an anonymous crowd. He pictures himself “dividing” the prairie-grass, rather than uniting it, and, from his ambiguous syntax, it sounds as if the grass itself is dividing.
The prairie-grass lacks the associations with love and death that fuel the plant imagery in other Calamus poems. Sometimes, Whitman links grass to love and death by bringing soil into the picture, but here he portrays the grass blades only above-ground (in the “open atmosphere,” “sunlit, fresh, nutritious”). As a result, they seem phallic but not erotic – not rooted in natural cycles of mortality and birth.
The word “chary” means discreetly cautious, hesitant and vigilant about dangers and risks. One is reminded of Whitman’s use of “chaste” in “Passing stranger.” His ideal here is a man who is lusty – healthy, strong, and full of “earth-born passion” – and yet chaste and temperate; someone who is attractive to and attracted to other men but whose companionship is a clear “spiritual corresponding” rather than a “tainted” homoerotic embrace; the men stand next to one another like blades of grass, but they do not “interchange” roots, as they did in “These I, singing in spring.” They may look “carelessly” into the faces of Presidents, but they carefully husband their love-power; instead of carelessly spilling their seed, they transmute it into personal, self-reliant vigor. The words “lusty,” “love-power,” and “passion” surge up against “chary” and “clear of taint,” like waves hitting the shore, embodying erotic energy and the difficulty of suppressing it.