What are the “tokens” that the poet says he may have dropped long ago, and which the animals have kept for him? Discuss this in class. (Hint: Whitman belongs to the Romantic tradition that includes Rousseau and Wordsworth, which holds that civilisation has made humans false to their own true nature. What could be the basic aspects of our nature as living beings that humans choose to ignore or deny?)

The token that the poet says he might have dropped long ago, and which the animals have kept for him, is his true nature as a human being. While human beings came close to development, they slowly moved away from their true nature. The values and instincts that humans had and the purity with which they lived and helped each other have been left behind somewhere. As they got near civilisation, they chose to leave the qualities of sympathy, honesty, generosity, joy, pleasure, decorum, and sharing. They took to evils such as greed, egoism, need to conquer everything, and other such inhuman features. Animals have carried forward the real instincts and characteristics, which the poet looks at and tries to remember where he had inattentively lost his true nature.

For more answers visit to website:
https://www.tiwariacademy.com/ncert-solutions/class-10/english/first-flight-chapter-6/