The poet is not afraid of death. In section 49, he addresses it: "And as to you Death, you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me." For there is no real death. Men die and are reborn in different forms. He himself has died "ten thousand times before." The poet feels (section 50) there is something that outweighs death, although it is hard for him to put a name to it: "It is form, union, plan — it is eternal life — it is Happiness."
The last two sections are expressions of farewell. "The past and present wilt — I have fill'd them, emptied them,/And proceed to fill my next fold of the future." He knows that his writings have been obscure but sees the paradoxes in his works as natural components in the mysteries of the cosmos: "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes.)" The poet can wait for those who will understand him. He tells them, "If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles," for he will have become part of the eternal life cycle. Although it may be difficult to find or interpret him, he will be waiting. "Missing me one place search another,/I stop somewhere waiting for you."
The poet's journey and quest for selfhood have now come full circle. He began by desiring to loaf on the grass and ends by bequeathing himself "to the dirt to grow from the grass I love."
These chants contain many of the important ideas and doctrines of Whitman. The poet brings a new message of faith for the strong and the weak, a belief in the harmony and orderliness of the universe. The poet, noting what has been said about the universe, shows how his own theories, which have a more universal scope, transcend them. Assuming the identity of the Savage-Christ, he delivers a sermon which imagines transcendence of the finite through a union of the individual soul with the Divine Soul. The poet offers to lead men and women "into the unknown — that is, into transcendent reality. Whitman talks about the self as part of the eternal life process. There is no death, for man is reincarnated time and time again. The poet speaks about man's relation with the moment and with eternity. Eternity is time endless, as is the self.
