Summary

“Miracles” opens with Whitman asserting the commonplace nature of miracles in the rhetorical question, “Why, who makes much of a miracle? / As to me I know of nothing else but miracles” (1-2). Yet rather than the commonplace nature of miracles making them banal and thereby worthless, Whitman seems to suggest that the profusion of miracles in daily life, rather than decreasing their value, only means that his existence and the entirety of his experiences are blessed. In fact, the rest of the first stanza features Whitman essentially cataloging the profusion of miracles and blessings in his life. While some of these lines, especially in around the first half of the stanza, refer to the urbanity of Whitman’s immediate setting in New York City or a more suburban setting in contact with other people, many of Whitman’s lines of...