Section 5 Summary

Lines 26-27

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the ground,
spotting the gray debris,

• Whitman loves long-winded free verse, so even though line 27 might look like two lines, it's really only one. The line is so darn long that it can't fit on one line. These monster-sized lines are kind of Whitman's thing. Check out "Form and Meter" for more on them. 
• Section 5 brings us into yet another setting that kind of zooms out a bit in order to see the entire "breast of spring" of the land and cities. 
• But we notice it's not all about spring here. We have some "gray debris" in line 27 that tells us that some sort of destruction has occurred. Usually gray debris is the consequence of explosions, gunpowder, or other man-made demolition (think the clean-up crew on a Michael Bay movie set). 
• So, amid all these lanes in the cities and woods of the land, little violets "peep" from the ground, pushing apart some of the gray debris that's lying around. 
• Yet again we have more blending of the good with the bad in an effort to accentuate the perseverance of life some more. Even with all the debris on the ground, those violets still manage to peep on through.
• Notice too that we're getting our first hints of wartime in these lines. Debris doesn't come from nature—man has to create it.
• So here we know that some sort of battle or conflict has occurred. 
• When we consider Whitman's time period, we can kind of put two and two together and figure out that we're probably talking about America's Civil War here. The word "lately" tells us that his speaker isn't looking back in time to some other war.

Lines 28-29

Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields
uprisen,

• The landscape continues with lanes (dirt roads) bordered by fields of grass and wheat. We kind of feel like we're in America's heartland at this point, with lots of farms and crops ready for harvesting. 
• Since the grass is "endless," we feel again the speaker's sense of spring's perseverance despite all the debris we saw earlier.
• More importantly, something is "passing" that grass, moving along those lanes. We're not sure quite what it is yet, though. 
• We can say that, since "every grain from its shroud" is "uprisen," we also get a sense of nature's strength. The landscape isn't just enduring with a few shrouds of wheat. It's enduring with force, which again suggests that life goes on and can even flourish despite all of man's conflicts and upheaval. In your face, humanity.

Lines 30-32

Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.

• Whatever it is that's passing is now going past orchards now, with apple trees and their white and pink blossoms—how pretty.
• This imagery puts us in mind of spring's fertility. 
• But when we get to line 31, things suddenly look dark again. Whatever's passing the orchard also happens to be "carrying a corpse" to a grave. Finally, line 32 reveals what it is (in case you haven't guessed yet): "a coffin." It's traveling night and day.
• So, the coffin is really the subject of a sentence that starts way back at the start of the section. We hear all about the scenery that the coffin is moving through, but only at the very end of this section do we learn that the thing doing the sight-seeing is basically a funeral procession. 
• Again, even in the midst of life's rich and fertile landscape, death is present (and vice versa). Once more we have our speaker blending the vivacity of spring with the stark realities of death and wartime. Together, they make for a rather potent display of the cycles of life and death coexisting. Amid all the orchards and fields is a dead body, making its way to the grave.