These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers
From the dark passages of “Whoever you are holding me now in hand,” Whitman returns to the pond-side where he began. Whereas “In paths untrodden” takes place in September and serves as an overture, this poem takes place in spring and serves as an introduction, presenting for the first time the calamus root. The poem includes sorrow and joy, love and death, but the overall mood is cheerful and open, with the poet managing to be simultaneously democratic and exclusive: giving a variety of pluckings to all and sundry, but reserving the calamus root for those who love as he loves.
The calamus plant, or sweet flag, was known in the nineteenth century for medicinal and aphrodisiacal qualities. It has long blades of grass and an unusual-looking, highly phallic seed pod.
In the second and third lines Whitman claims a unique role for himself – not as the bard of democratic America, but as the voice of comrades and lovers. As in “In paths untrodden,” the poet escapes the world and its conformities, as well as God, as he leaves the “gates” (of Eden) for a pond in the woods. This time, he immerses himself in the pond and gets his trousers wet, and we remember that for Whitman bathing and swimming are always amorous experiences.
When Odysseus visits the underworld and is swarmed by ghosts, he turns pale with fear and draws his sword. But, for Whitman, the spirits are all friends, both alive and dead, and he seems happy and unafraid. He plucks “tokens” of many plants and tosses them to whoever is nearest. Then, wading in the pond, he draws from the water a calamus root and reveals that it was here, at the pond-side, that he last saw his tender lover, who will return and never separate again. From all the other plants, he chooses flowers, stems, twigs, and leaves, but from the calamus he chooses the root. The root is a phallic image for Whitman (as in “manroot”) as well as something that grows underground, in the darkness, more enduring and essential than any other part of the plant, making it a fit symbol for the “life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all the rest.”