Episode 6: Specimen Days [The Inauguration]

In this special episode, Jack and Connor discuss "Specimen Days [The Inauguration]," Walt Whitman's poetic reflection on Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration in 1865.

Today is inauguration day in the United States. For the first time since Robert Frost read at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, there will not be an inaugural poem. Perhaps there is no great meaning to be found in this. However, a recent report indicated that budget cuts proposed by the incoming administration include the privatization of PBS and the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Much as they decided that they could not let the election pass without some reflection, Connor and Jack venture into the literary wilds and offer some thoughts on an inauguration-themed poem.

Specimen Days [The Inauguration]
By: Walt Whitman

March 4th.—The President very quietly rode down to the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish’d to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin temple of liberty and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o’clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look’d very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach’d to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western form of manliness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of arm’d cavalrymen eight deep, with drawn sabres; and there were sharpshooters station’d at every corner on the route.) I ought to make mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was such a compact jam in front of the White House—all the grounds fill’d, and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notion to go—was in the rush inside with the crowd—surged along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine Band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to be somewhere else.