As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

The poem’s opening line announces that the poem will explore a post-bellum America, an America broken just eight years earlier by the cannibal logic of a bloody civil war. Less a narrative, which is a story with a plot and characters, and action compelled by suspense and moving toward some big-bang climax, “As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days” is something of a pronouncement, the speaker engaging with nothing less than his nation rather than with any specific audience, much less with himself. Inspired by the exponential growth of post-Civil War America, the poet uses as his starting point how just a short time ago the country, “the struggle of blood finish’d” (Line 2), was devastated, scarred, its landscape in smoke and ruin. Although the poet is not naïve enough to pretend that sometime in the future “more denser wars,” “more dreadful contests” (Line 5) will not shake the foundations of his country again, America for now has rebounded and now thrives in a kinetic environment animated by a boom of new inventions that represent the practical applications of innovative theories in the sciences. In turn, the “growth of cities and the spread of inventions” (Line 9) have fostered America’s boom economy, resulting in the rebuilding of America’s urban infrastructure.