<P> "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" is a poem by Walt Whitman.It was first published in 1860 as' A Word Out of the Sea' . It is one of Whitman's complex and successfully integrated poems . Whitman has used several new techniques in the poem . One of them is the use of images like bird, boy, sea . The influence of music is also seen in opera form . Some critics have taken the poem to be an elegy mourning the death of someone dear to him . The basic theme of the poem is' relationship between suffering and art' . It shows how the boy matures into a poet through his experience of love and death . Art is a sublimation of frustrations and death is a release from the stress and strains caused by such frustrations . In language this poem is similar to his There Was a Child Went Forth . </P> <P> The poem features a young boy walking on the beach, who finds two mockingbirds nesting and watches them . The female bird fails to appear one day, and the male bird cries out for her . The bird's cries create an awakening in the boy, who translates what the male is saying in the rest of the poem . As this happens, the boy recognizes the impact of nature on the human soul and his own burgeoning consciousness . </P>

What is out of the cradle endlessly rocking about