Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching
content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can
walk undisturb'd,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal
sanities! ( "Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun," 1)

Basic set up:

This is the beginning of Whitman's poem. The speaker isn't asking for much. Just some fields, a sun, and a bunch of other beautiful things.

Gimme, gimme, gimme. How about "please," Walt? Whitman's poem is about nature. Each line in the above poem evokes an aspect of nature: the "silent splendid sun," "serene-moving animals," "a field where unmow'd grass grows," and so on.

Here, Whitman is evoking the power of nature. Nature can heal us; it can make us sane ("give me O Nature your primal sanities!"). Nature is just the awesomest. And Whitman wants it all. He wants it bad. Nature is Whitman's precious.

There's a lot of repetition in these lines. "Give me," for example, is repeated in every line… Walt starts to sound a bit like Veruca Salt. Whitman's poetic style in general is notable for its use of repetition. He uses it to create rhythm and also to express the power of his desire. This dude really wants nature. He wants it so bad he's going to keep asking for it until he gets it.

We can also see Whitman's characteristic simple language and use of free verse in these lines. Whitman, as we mentioned, was very much into breaking poetic convention. And nothing was less conventional than refusing outright to rhyme. Whitman was a poet it, and he knew it.