Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 89-91
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance,
I considered long and seriously of you before you were born.
- Mr. Whitman, are you trying to seduce us?
- Now that he has made us feel more comfortable by confessing some of his inner thoughts, he inches closer and tries to change the subject to us. He turns the table on the reader, saying that he knows as much about us as we do about him. He thought about us even before we were born.
- Like a farmer who saves his crop of "lays his stores in advance," Whitman has been saving up thoughts of us for just this moment.