. . . "I Hear America Singing" presents an image of America that America would like to believe true—an image of proud and healthy individualists engaged in productive and happy labor. Mechanic, carpenter, mason, boatman, deckhand, shoemaker, hatter, wood-cutter, plowboy—from city to country, from sea to land, the "varied carols" reflect a genuine joy in the day’s creative labor that makes up the essence of the American dream or myth. . . . America singing emerges as a happy, individualistic, proudly procreative, and robustly comradely America. It is surprising that in such a brief poem so much of Whitman’s total concept of modern man could be implied.