Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
- Whitman returns to the idea that nature contains all truth. Now he talks about truth being "born" from things, having impregnated the world in the previous sections.
- Truth must be shown, he says, not proven. Deep truths should be self-evident.
- The "soggy clods" of damp earth will become "lovers and lamps," that is, people whose love shines within them.
- He seems to be comparing people with plants that grow from the soil and spread their branches and leaves outward.