To you of New England
Whitman remains in his prophetic mode, addressing the men of New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Canada, and the South – telling them that the main purport of the States is to found a superb friendship that is latent in all men. On the eve of the Civil War, he tries to bind South and North together with love. As in “I dreamed in a dream,” he is enacting a new founding of the republic; he is a new “founding father.” The tone is optimistic and not embattled. It is tempting to read “germs” as indicating ambivalence about manly love – that it might be diseased – but germ theory was not yet established, and the word “germ” probably had no negative connotations for Whitman and his initial readers. Perhaps the only hint of ambivalence comes from the word “purport,” which, as a verb, can mean to make a specious claim.
In other poems, Whitman has indicated his purpose in founding a new adhesiveness. In “To you of New England,” he attributes that purpose to the States. Where in line four, the word “these” seems to refer to the poems, in line five he transitions to the purport of “These States,” not just “these poems.” He is not inventing adhesion; he is the prophet who finds it latent within himself and other men and draws it out, helps to give it public birth.
The poem is relatively simple and didactic, but Whitman strengthens it with verbal music, repeating the ate sound in “waits,” “waiting,” and “latent” and joining the last three lines with the per sound of “perfect,” “purport,” “superb,” and “perceive” – words which also chime with the er sound in “Southerner” and “germs” and the p sounds in “Pennsylvania” and “previously.”
Surprisingly, Whitman reaches for a French word, “exalté,” in the middle of his nativist American paean – perhaps drawing on associations with “fraternité” and the ideals of the French Revolution, or perhaps just adding a slightly pretentious note to make the friendship seem even more “superb.” He seems to be using “exalté” as an adjective for “exalted,” but in French it is a literary noun meaning a person who is elated or impassioned, so perhaps he is smuggling a bit of latent passion into this otherwise virtuous poem.