Great are the Myths
Read "Great are the Myths" by Walt Whitman, a celebratory poem praising myths alongside truth, love, the human body, the earth, and individual identity, reflecting Whitman's expansive belief in the greatness and interconnectedness of existence.
1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
warriors,
and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth—equally great is Old Age—great are the Day and Night;
Great is Wealth—great is Poverty—great is Expression—great is Silence.
Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
Day, full-blown and splendid—Day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring darkness.
Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality;
But then the Soul’s wealth, which is candor, knowledge, pride, enfolding love;
(Who goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than wealth?)
Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that Silence is also
expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the coldest, may be without
words.
2
Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is;
Do you imagine it has stopt at this? the increase abandon’d?
Understand then that it goes as far onward from this, as this is from the times when it
lay in
covering waters and gases, before man had appear’d.
Great is the quality of Truth in man;
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
It is inevitably in the man—he and it are in love, and never leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight;
If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or woman there is truth—if
there
be physical or moral, there is truth;
If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be things at all upon
the
earth, there is truth.
O truth of the earth! I am determin’d to press my way toward you;
Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after you.
3
Great is Language—it is the mightiest of the sciences,
It is the fulness, color, form, diversity of the earth, and of men and women, and of all
qualities and processes;
It is greater than wealth—it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings,
music.
Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English?
Great is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule;
The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice, equality in the Soul
rule.
Great is Law—great are the few old land-marks of the law,
They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturb’d.
4
Great is Justice!
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the Soul;
It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity,
can;
It is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or what not, come at
last
before the same passionless and exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges—is it in their Souls;
It is well assorted—they have not studied for nothing—the great includes the
less;
They rule on the highest grounds—they oversee all eras, states, administrations.
The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front before God;
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall stand
back—heaven
and hell shall stand back.
5
Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever;
Great is Death—sure as life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together.
Has Life much purport?—Ah, Death has the greatest purport.
Great are the Myths Summary and Analysis
Walt Whitman builds the poem as a rolling catalogue of affirmations, each praise moving from myth and history to body, society, language, justice, life, and death. The voice is expansive and welcoming, but it is not passive admiration: the poem keeps testing every greatness against something larger or deeper. Youth is answered by old age, wealth by inward richness, speech by silence, and law by the moral authority of the soul. Whitman's method is to gather opposites and insist that each gains meaning only in relation to its counterpart.
The speaker presents himself as a companion to these grand forces rather than a detached observer. He claims allegiance to liberty and equality, follows the nations wherever they go, and pursues truth with the same determination one might bring to a physical quest. Yet the poem repeatedly complicates its own confident scale. It praises English speech, then extends its larger argument toward the soul's universal standards; it celebrates justice as fixed and natural, then places human judgment under a higher tribunal; it ends by making death equal in grandeur to life. The central meaning lies in this widening vision: existence cannot be reduced to one value, one age, one power, or even one side of the mortal equation.
Tone in Great are the Myths
Whitman's tone is exalted, inclusive, and confidently meditative, as though he is speaking from a height that can see the breadth of human life at once. At the same time, the mood shifts between buoyant celebration and solemn reflection. The reader feels swept into a grand vision, but also made aware that every triumph carries its opposite, and that the poem's final calm comes not from denying mortality but from granting it dignity.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in Great are the Myths
- Contraries and balance - Whitman gives equal dignity to opposites such as youth and age, day and night, wealth and poverty, speech and silence, showing that no single condition can claim all greatness.
- Democracy and fellowship - The poem joins the poet to liberty, equality, nations, and ordinary human differences, suggesting a shared life in which individual identity is bound to collective destiny.
- Spiritual truth - Truth is treated as something inward and living rather than abstract, rooted in the soul and carried through bodily existence, moral choice, and changing history.
- Language and expression - Whitman celebrates language as a force that shapes the world, while also insisting that silence can express as deeply as speech.
- Cosmic change - The earth, the heavens, and human history are all shown as unfinished, always moving forward beyond any present state.
- Justice beyond institutions - Legal systems matter, but the poem places ultimate justice in the soul and in a deeper natural order that outlasts governments and majorities.
- The equality of life and death - The closing movement refuses to treat death as merely an ending; instead, it gives death a grandeur and importance equal to life.
Literary Devices in Great are the Myths
- Anaphora - The repeated opening phrase creates a chant-like rhythm that turns praise into a public, cumulative act.
- Cataloguing - Whitman piles up persons, qualities, and abstract values to create a sweeping democratic inventory of existence.
- Parallelism - Repeated grammatical structures reinforce the poem's sense that different states and forces belong on the same scale of importance.
- Rhetorical questions - Questions such as those about wealth and truth challenge the reader to reconsider easy assumptions and to test values against the poem's larger claims.
- Apposition and definition - Many lines explain one idea by placing it beside another, as when wealth is answered by the soul's wealth, making the poem argumentative as well as lyrical.
- Personification - Liberty, Justice, Night, and Death are treated as if they were active presences, giving abstract ideas human force.
- Hyperbole - The repeated insistence that something is "great" enlarges the poem's range and gives its judgments a visionary scale.
- Antithesis - The poem depends on sharp oppositions, especially when one condition is made meaningful by the presence of its counterpart.
Symbolism in Great are the Myths
- Myths - They represent inherited stories and cultural memory, but Whitman places them alongside living realities rather than above them.
- Day and Night - These recurring opposites symbolize the full cycle of human experience, energy and rest, visibility and inwardness.
- Wealth - Material wealth stands for outward success and social display, but it is contrasted with deeper spiritual richness.
- Silence - Silence symbolizes a form of expression that does not depend on speech, especially for powerful emotions.
- The earth - The earth suggests a vast evolutionary and historical process that continues beyond the present moment.
- Truth - Truth functions as an inner force, almost a living companion, rather than a mere proposition or rule.
- Law - Law symbolizes social order, yet the poem treats it as secondary to justice grounded in the soul.
- Death - Death is not only an ending but a governing power that gives shape and meaning to life.
Historical Context of Great are the Myths
The poem belongs to the world of nineteenth-century American Transcendental and democratic writing, where poets often sought spiritual truth in nature, the self, and the common life of the nation. Whitman's characteristic free verse, expansive list-making, and embrace of ordinary as well as grand subjects reflect a break from tight conventional forms and a desire to create a literature equal to a rapidly changing democracy.
Its attention to liberty, equality, language, and social order also fits the era's intense debate over national identity, moral reform, and the relation between individual conscience and public institutions. Whitman often writes as if the modern world is still in formation, and this poem captures that confidence in change while grounding it in larger natural and spiritual laws.
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