Section 5 recounts a scene of General Washington in Brooklyn “amid a crowd of officers,” unable to express his grief over the killing. With the coming of peace, Washington bids good-bye to his soldiers. He stands in a room and the “speechless” officers give him a loving farewell.
Here Whitman is again using the technique of a backward and forward movement in time and space. In this section, a backward movement is conceived in terms of time as the poet recalls General Washington. The poet’s vision triumphs over time and space. In evoking the memory of the Founding Fathers, he establishes a link with the past.
Whitman recollects, in section 6, an experience of his mother’s “when she was a nearly grown girl” and lived with her parents. An Indian woman visited their homestead in the morning and stayed until mid-afternoon. The “red squaw” was a person of “wonderful beauty and purity” and the poet’s mother was delighted by her. She thought of her and watched for her for a long time, but the Indian woman never returned.
This is yet another scene of spiritual love. The bond that united Washington with his soldiers (section 5) was personal and spiritual. The description of the spiritual affinity between the poet’s mother and the Indian woman is delicately drawn. It gives all the significant details, is realistic, down-to-earth, and precise. She is an embodiment of primeval purity and beauty. The impression she makes is so deep that the poet’s mother thinks of her for a long time afterward. This longing and fondness is similar to a romantic quest.
Sections 5 and 6, the scenes of Washington and of the Indian woman, present a contrast to the scenes of shipwreck and death in sections 3 and 4. Scenes of separation and frustration are followed by those of union and fulfillment.
In section 7, the poet’s mood changes again. He has been in “contact of something unseen—an amour of the light and air.” The seasons become part of him and his dreams. “Elements merge in the night,” people recall their pasts in dreams and imagine themselves to be living in the past again. “The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman ... voyages home ... /To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill’d ships.” These “immigrants,” like “the beautiful lost swimmer,” “the red squaw,” and all other people are restored to health by sleep—and made equal to each other, too: “one is no better than the other.” They are all beautiful. The universe is orderly and everything is in its proper place. They are all different but are united in sleep. “The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite—they unite now.”
A notable image of this section is that of light. The poet experiences “an amour of the light and air.” The imagery of light suggests the illumination resulting from Whitman’s mystical experience. This section also exemplifies Whitman’s technique of presenting a series of men and objects in quick progression, illustrative of diversity, but also an initial step to the idea of unity.
Other images are those of return and of beauty. The imagery of men returning to their original homes perhaps suggests the return of the world to its origins, of man to his primeval abode, in a process of spiritual renewal.
Men and women become beautiful in sleep. Beauty, associated with darkness, attains a spiritual quality which is the essential element in the poet’s mystical experience here. The beautiful sleepers “flow hand in hand over the whole earth” in section 8. All are linked together in harmony. They become beautiful in the “invigoration” and the “chemistry” of the night. Hearts flow freely into hearts, and barriers are broken. This is the miraculous effect of the night. The poet, too, surrenders himself to the charm of the night. Although he loves “the rich running day,” he does not ignore the night. He desires ultimately to return to his “mother,” the night.
The poet here hints at the concept of reincarnation. He passes from the night, but he returns to her again. The night is a vast reservoir of spiritual energy, and the poet, on shedding his earthly garments, wishes to join his mother, the vast realm of the spirit, to find fulfillment of his own self.
