Song of Myself

Quote #1: "The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case, (He will nevre sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;)"

This quote has almost no deeper meaning, as it basically comes out and says that it is about an insane criminal being convicted and proven guilty being taken to the asylum. Although there's a lack of deeper meaning, there IS a moral to the story. Th moral is that crime doesn't go unpunished, shown in the line "(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;)" which means that he will never have as good living conditions as he did before he commited a crime.

Quote #2: "The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future."

This is probably my favorite quote in the book so far, because it's so deep but so understandable. He means what he say, that the past and present do not matter to him, only what the future holds. Yet it is much deeper. It says that Whitman refuses to look back on his past because there's obviously something horrible that he never wants to think about again, and he had to be going through a tough time because he's trying to forget the present as well, and he's looking to the future to stop his sorrow.