Comparing Robert Frost And Walt Whitman

God said “let there be light,” and there was light. Alexander Graham Bell said “hello,” and there was light. Albert Einstein said “e=mc2,” and there was light. The illumination of the mind has no concern for pride, overconfidence, or ignorance. Light is simply an intrinsicity of the human form, a manifestation of science, community, faith, and reason. This establishes enlightenment, for the better or for worse, as the defining uniquity of humanity. There is the light beaming from nature, lamps from every single personality, and a ceaseless struggle between all of those wavelengths emitted. They can construct together to a brighter future, or interfere to an abyss. The philosophical personas of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost observe these vital

The water of Whitman's work parallels the wind of Frost’s—both embody the prehistoric treadings of darkness, establishing the essence behind existence as an indifferent and untamed gust or an everlasting immensity of water. However, the fundamental divide between the ideologies of Frost and Whitman forms as Whitman poses no initial movement or direction of the water, however pointless these may be, and given no intrinsic purpose as prescribed to the wind of Frost’s poem. This is an entirely different preface to humanity, as it establishes a similarly “pointless” but wholly purposeless nature of existence. This seemingly small variation—purposed pointlessly or purposed not at all—between the poems poses a dichotomy between Frost’s and Whitman's interpretations of humanity. In “Had I the Choice,” the torch beholden to humanity is the only light, and that light is the only movement and upheaval the water ever faces, whether it be with direction or without it. Unlike Frost’s billowing wind, Whitman's water is a darkness without reason to be dark, and its purpose only emerges when humanity splashes in it, creating its only waves. This is how Whitman observes the water—its importance comes not from its calm body but the waves on its disrupted surface, waves created by enlightened individuals of the past, like Homer, Shakespeare, and Tennyson. Has he states his

However, comprehending them in unity provides a unique perspective on a multiphasic nature of thought, where light can emerge and behave in many different ways. The basis of reality—existence—forms the backbone of both works, but the contrary depictions of the origin of light in that basal darkness only show that thought and enlightenment are not singularly derived properties, but simplifications of many properties, whether it be from a dark nature, a bright mankind, or an unseen God. Light can brighten out of a fear of being extinguished, but it can also intensify to cast vision and purpose in darkness. In truth, all light can be categorized as fear of the dark or a curiosity of what it may hold—a purpose to avoid death and hunger or a quest to find satisfaction and fulfillment. All humanity knows of the light is that it exists dash it is futile to find its source, whether it be born there, placed there, or nurtured there. Even the properties of light itself cannot be truly understood—it can be a miniscule and insignificant particulate emanation, fully lost and incapable of illuminating the infinity beyond it, or the opposite as a wave flowing across an entire ocean, able to fully modify and give purpose to the great body it travels