The poem 'Animals' has been penned by Walt Whitman.
The central idea of the poem is that animals today are better than humans.
The poet has broken away from the conventional use of a rhyme scheme and has written the poem in free verse.
The chief figure of speech used in the poem is Repetition. Lines such as "They do not sweat. Do not lie awake. "They do not make me sick.. make a strong impact. expressing the qualities that humans should possess, but do not. The other figures of speech are Alliteration, Tautology. Hyperbole, etc.
A line in this poem which is my favourite is:
They bring me tokens of myself. This is a very powerful line that shows us what good qualities human beings must have possessed when they were almost like animals in the early stages of evolution and which animals still possess, while we do not.
This is a reflective poem. The language used is simple, but the tone is subtle. By describing the qualities that animals possess today, the poet indirectly implies that we human beings too should possess these qualities. The poet has used adjectives such as 'placid' and 'self-contained' to bring out the good qualities possessed by animals.
I like this poem very much because it tells us indirectly that if we want to improve human relationships we should observe and pick up qualities that animals now possess and which we might have once possessed but had carelessly given up on the path of evolution.
