This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight”
From its first phrase, “A Clear Midnight” builds an aura of wonder. Whitman carefully develops the mood to lift the soul in contemplation. But, how does this short poem so easily move one to quiet meditation? Elements are the key. Every letter is perfectly chosen to fit the mood of a line. After establishing the poem’s quiet, elevated mood in the first line, the next three move the reader from the excitement of activity to the peace of meditation. A true master, Whitman uses the elements of sound and rhetorical devices to delight and inspire the reader’s own soul.
In the first clause, Whitman creates a hushed setting. Entirely lacking mute consonants, “This is thy hour O Soul” (line 1) impresses the reader with a quiet and gentle ambiance. While the liquid letters establish a peaceful tone for the poem, the words inspire a meditative mood in the reader. Whitman begins contemplation of abstract truth with a direct address to the intangible soul. Combined with soft sounds of the consonants and long vowels, the elevated language of “O Soul” works from the quiet setting and lifts the reader into meditation.
The rise is punctuated and confirmed by the emphasis on “flight.” In the first line, only “flight” ends with a consonantal mute, while the other words are full of vowels, liquids and semivowels. Even the other two stops in “into” and “wordless” are softened by vowels and gentler consonants. According to Mary Oliver, “Within a line, use of a mute sound is like a tiny swoon, a mini-caesura” (Oliver 61). As the reader is forced to pause at the end of the word, he is given time to picture the implied metaphor. The alliteration in “free flight” ties the words together and brings up the traditional metaphor of the soul as a dove. By using slightly more powerful letters in the second phrase, Whitman and further lifts the reader’s thoughts builds up his exhilaration.
The second line builds off this energy to move the reader out of pressures and distractions. With a long vowel in “away,” Whitman places a distance between the soul and the business of the day. This is also emphasized his avoidance of mentioning the word “soul” in the line. Without even a pronoun reference, the soul is completely disconnected from both the line and the demanding work it represents. Whitman establishes the day’s agitation with heavy mutes in “books” and “art.” The oppressive consonants build the feeling that if the soul does not escape, books and art will trample it. Whitman demonstrates this detachment with the line’s ending. As the d’s enclose “day erased,” one can see the whole day closed and put away just like a book. At midnight, the soul leaves all distractions and finishes the day. Even so, another mute consonant in “done” emphasizes the break from stress while the liquid n closes both the line and the reader’s mouth. Whitman builds up the antagonistic energy with the power of mutes and uses the visual absence of the soul to argue that, as in the line, the soul must break with the day’s pressure and fly away to the quiet of midnight to meditate.
After establishing the flight from the cares of the day, Whitman transitions back to the soul and its meditation by returning to the softer voiced “Thee” and “thou.” With the opening vowels and consonant clusters he presents a fall from the forceful energy in the second line. Mary Oliver explains that liquids “suggest softness, fluency, motion” while a mute “is an enforcer of the self-containment, and so the certainty, of what has been said” (Oliver 61). Thus, the rest of the line returns to the initial sense of quiet elation by swelling the energy from the opening th’s to the gentler g’s within “emerging” to the hard t’s closing “lovest best.” In the description of the soul, one word stands out from the parallel –ing suffixes. “Silent” is not only set apart from the balance, but its t ending also helps to elevate it above the rest of the line. Like “wordless” from the first line, it hits on the poem’s main point. When the soul is engaged in meditation, it has no words to describe the beauty it contemplates.
As it rebuilds a meditative mood, the third line also returns to a more cheerful attitude. Whitman develops the thoughtfulness by using increasingly more forceful words. Yet, even with more stops, as in “gazing” and “pondering,” only the t’s particularly stand out. As the line ends, several technical devices focus the reader’s attention on the last two words. Once again, the reader lingers over the words because of the mutes’ natural pause. Furthermore, the slight rhyme ties together “lovest best” and multiplies the impact of the pleasant word and positive superlative. These devices effect a happy feeling as the soul fully embarks on its journey of wondering meditation.
The poem’s upward flight reaches its crescendo in Whitman’s final line. Fittingly, each of the beginning three words has a natural punch from a consonantal mute. Since they are the substance of the soul’s contemplation, “night,” “sleep,” and “death” rightly stand out from the rest of the poem. The hard consonants, however, also set them apart from the rest of the line and emphasize their significance. But, the stops only symbolize the weight that each word carries in its own meaning and the silence inherent in each. Although the first few words of the line hit the reader with their quiet heaviness, Whitman does not leave the reader depressed and weighed down. Rather, he ends the poem on a pleasant note.
The very last word perfectly encapsulates Whitman’s excellent use of words and sounds. In the end, Whitman again lightens and elevates the mood by metaphorically lifting the reader’s gaze to “the stars.” The final word inspires the soul in its meditative hour to think of great things outside itself. Here is the full culmination of the poem as the reader saying the last a in “stars” physically drops his jaw like the soul in silent wondering meditation in “A Clear Midnight.” Thus, Whitman proves his masterful use of sounds and letters, which gives the poem its inspirational power and encourages the reader to join the soul’s contemplative wonder.
Works Cited
Oliver, Mary. Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
Whitman, Walt. “A Clear Midnight.” From Leaves of Grass, 1900. Bartleby. 17 April 2006. http://www.bartleby.com/142/283.html
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