Whitman writes at forty, full of energy, and looks far into the future, directly at us—readers who might live a century or many centuries later. He announces his presence in the present tense: “I, forty years old… / To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you.” The feeling is one of intense, almost defiant aliveness. Then he imagines the moment when we encounter his lines. By then, he knows, he will be gone, “invisible,” while we—the reader—will be the one alive, “compact, visible,” searching for him in the words. The mood shifts from bold self-assertion into something gentler and more intimate. He invites us to picture the two of us as friends, wishing we could actually meet. Then he offers a strange reassurance: don’t be too sure I’m not with you. The poem becomes a quiet, warm haunting. It creates the sense that reading closes the distance between the living and the dead, turning a solitary act into a kind of companionship across time.
Full of Life, Now. — Summary
FULL of life, now, compact, visible, I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States, To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence, To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you.
When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible; Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me; Fancying how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your comrade; Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)