Talk:Walt Whitman

A perfect short poem makes up for many smears

I'm spent a fair amount of time reading Leaves of Grass, and I don't consider it to be easy for mainstream readers. I included in this article two brief examples of Whitman writing at his very best. The short poem 'A Noiseless Patient Spider' is on a par with the greatest short poems in the world; it reminds me of an even shorter gem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a highly prolific German author born half a century before Whitman. Goethe's 'Wanderer's Nightsong II' ("Über allen Gipfeln"), which is unfortunately difficult to render into English without losing much of its haunting beauty. That didn't stop Wadsworth from trying to translate it anyway:

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

O'er all the hilltops
Is quiet now,
In all the treetops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees:
Wait, soon like these
Thou too shalt rest. (H. W. Longfellow, translator)