* April, 1892.
Walt Whitman's death can have taken no one by surprise. For years he had
been at the brink of the grave, and the end comes as a relief. A great
soul may be cheerful, or at least serene, in all circumstances; but
there is neither pleasure nor dignity in living on as the ghost of one's
self.
Few superber specimens of physical manhood than Walt Whitman's have
appeared on this planet. "He looks like a man," said Abraham Lincoln,
as his gaze followed the poet past a window of the White House. Whitman
stood six feet two, his limbs and torso were splendid, and his head was
magnificently proportioned. His vitality must have been wonderful, and
his health was absolutely perfect until after the War, during which he
too assiduously nursed the sick and wounded, to the lasting detriment of
his phenomenal constitution. The flame of his life burnt on for another
thirty years, but his strength was seriously undermined, and he is far
better entitled to be called a martyr than many who have more cheaply
earned the distinction.
Walt Whitman's great personality can hardly be disputed. He impressed
himself as something colossal on all who came into close contact with
him. The magnetism of his presence in the military hospitals was more
sanative than the doctors' physic. Men, women, and children felt glad
and satisfied in his company. His large, frank, healthy nature radiated
a perpetual benediction. One who knew him intimately has said that he
never saw upon Whitman's features any trace of mean or evil passions.
The man was thoroughly wholesome. Even his occasionally free utterances
on sexuality are only sins against decorum. They do not violate nature.
He never spoke on this subject with the slobbery grin of the voluptuary,
or the leer of prurience. He was at such moments simply unreticent.
Meaning no harm, he suspected none. In this respect he belonged to a
less self-conscious antiquity, when nothing pertaining to man was common
or unclean, and even the worship of the powers of generation was not
without dignity and solemnity.
Some of the foremost Englishmen of our time have acknowledged Whitman's
greatness and sanity--notably Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson. Mr.
Swinburne is the only one who has unsaid his praise.
Tennyson's intimacy with Whitman--always through correspondence--was
simply beautiful. A superficial reader of human nature might have
inquired what they had in common--the rough, amorphous American poet,
and the exquisite English poet, a flower of millenniums of culture. But
there is something deeper than form. It is substance. There is something
deeper than language. It is manhood. And on the common ground of the
deeper things of life, the American and English poets--otherwise so
diverse--clasped hands, as it were, across the sundering ocean.
Whitman's claim to be considered a great poet, or even a poet at all,
has been the subject of hot dispute. But such questions are not
so settled. Only give time enough, and every writer falls by mere
gravitation into his proper place, from which all the controversies in
the world can never shift him. Where the evidence is largely subjective,
as it must be in appraising genius, there is sure to be much in our
judgment that is incommunicable. The logic of events, as we say in
politics; or the proof of the pudding, as we say in the vernacular; is
not so brilliant as logical sword-play, but it has the merit of being
decisive.
Whitman's poetry looks strange to a reader accustomed to conventional
models. It positively offends his eyesight. The ear may detect a certain
rhythm, but where are the set lengths of orthodox versification? Here,
however, there lurks a fallacy. Poetry is not the antithesis of prose.
The antithesis of prose is verse. Some of the finest and noblest poetry
in the world's literature is not cast in rhyme, though rhythm--often
subtler than all possible rules--is indispensable. Yet there is
something precious in poetical form; ay, and something durable. Many an
exquisite lyric, with no great depth of feeling or reach of thought, has
come down the stream of time, and will float upon it for ever. No
doubt Dr. Johnson was right in calling it a waste of time to carve
cherrystones, but precious stones are the more valued and admired for
the art of the lapidary. Whitman did not cultivate versification. He
almost despised it. He sneered at "dulcet rhymes." Yet this may hinder
his access to posterity. Mr. Meredith hints as much in his sonnet
entitled "An Orson of the Muse," which surely refers to Whitman. He
allows him to be the Muse's son, though he will not wear her livery.
Him, whom he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,
The Muse will hearken to with graver ear
Than many of her train can waken: him
Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear
Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,
If in no vessel built for sea they swim.
That Whitman, however, could do great things with rhythm, and without
rhyme, is proved by his "Funeral Hymn of President Lincoln," which James
Thomson ranked with Shelley's "Adonais," and Mr. Swinburne called "the
most sublime nocturne ever chanted in the cathedral of the world." That
this is a great poem, and will live, we have not the slightest doubt.
Some other of Whitman's poems will doubtless live with it, but whole
masses of his poetry will probably sink to the bottom--not, however,
before doing their work and delivering their message.
Because of his want of form, Whitman suffers more than other poets in
extracts. We shall make none, but refer the reader to the whole body of
his poetry, Some of it is almost wearisome; the rest will repay study.
It contains the utterance of a great soul, full of love and friendship,
patriotism and humanity, brooding over the everlasting problems of
life and death. Untrammelled by schools and systems, Whitman was a
true Freethinker. Cosmopolitan as he was, he preached the gospel of
individuality.
"This is what you shall do: love the earth and the sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid
and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the
people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or
number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the
young and mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at
school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency,
not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and
between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your
body."
Whitman appealed to the brotherhood of all and the dignity of each. He
declared he would have nothing which every other man might not have on
equal terms. The business of the great poet was "to cheer up slaves and
horrify despots." Men, too, should keep in close communion with
Nature, yet always feel that they could "be good or grand only of the
consciousness of the supremacy within them."
"What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of
human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something
in the soul which says-Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and
everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the
sea, of all terror and all pain."
America, perhaps even more than England, has need of Whitman's teaching
as the poet of Democracy. He derided "the mania of owning things,"
he scorned distinctions of caste and class, he sang the divineness
of comradeship--and, what is more, he practised it. Full-blooded,
strong-limbed, rich-brained, large-hearted men and women are a nation's
best products, and if a nation does not yield them, its wealth will only
hasten its doom and pollute its grave.