Although often lambasted by establishment critics and more prominent poets of his era as an uncouth, uneducated “barbarian,” Whitman was no fool. He knew firsthand the onerous obligations of work. It is an axiom of a consumer capitalist society now and in Whitman’s era: If anyone actually liked to work, they wouldn’t have to be paid to do it. Here, however, workers go about their routine, backbreaking and tedious, nevertheless joyously singing. This whole whistle-while-you-work argument is, granted, idealistic. It is not how work is but how work might be, could be, maybe even should be. Like every work by every Transcendentalist (and Fireside Poet, and for that matter, every Christian theologian back to Augustine) Whitman’s argument here is set against, even despite, reality not because of it.

Everything in Whitman’s own background would render ironic the happy argument that celebrates work as deeply, unapologetically rewarding. Surely Whitman must be mocking the idea of rewarding work. After all, Whitman as a child had watched his father lose what little savings the family had by pursuing a pipe dream, a tantalizing longshot real estate speculation scheme that was designed to rescue him from the thankless drudgery of crafting an endless procession of tables and chairs for the homes of the wealthy people in nearby Manhattan.