the lips that received them! The most transcendent genius could not,
untaught by that "experience sweet and sad," have breathed out hymns for
her dead soldiers of such ineffably tender, sorrowful, yet triumphant
beauty.
But the present spreads before us other things besides those of which it
is easy to see the greatness and beauty; and the poet would leave us to
learn the hardest part of our lesson unhelped if he took no heed of these;
and would be unfaithful to his calling, as interpreter of man to himself
and of the scheme of things in relation to him, if he did not accept
all--if he did not teach "the great lesson of reception, neither
preference nor denial." If he feared to stretch out the hand, not of
condescending pity, but of fellowship, to the degraded, criminal, foolish,
despised, knowing that they are only laggards in "the great procession
winding along the roads of the universe," "the far-behind to come on in
their turn," knowing the "amplitude of Time," how could he roll the stone
of contempt off the heart as he does, and cut the strangling knot of the
problem of inherited viciousness and degradation? And, if he were not bold
and true to the utmost, and did not own in himself the threads of darkness
mixed in with the threads of light, and own it with the same strength and
directness that he tells of the light, and not in those vague generalities
that everybody uses, and nobody means, in speaking on this head,--in the
worst, germs of all that is in the best; in the best, germs of all that is
in the worst,--the _brotherhood_ of the human race would be a mere
flourish of rhetoric. And brotherhood is naught if it does not bring
brother's love along with it. If the poet's heart were not "a measureless
ocean of love" that seeks the lips and would quench the thirst of all, he
were not the one we have waited for so long. Who but he could put at last
the right meaning into that word "democracy," which has been made to bear
such a burthen of incongruous notions?
"By God! I will have nothing that all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms!"
flashing it forth like a banner, making it draw the instant allegiance of
every man and woman who loves justice. All occupations, however homely,
all developments of the activities of man, need the poet's recognition,
because every man needs the assurance that for him also the materials out
of which to build up a great and satisfying life lie to hand, the sole
magic in the use of them, all of the right stuff in the right hands.
Hence those patient enumerations of every conceivable kind of industry:--
"In them far more than you estimated--in them far less also."
Far more as a means, next to nothing as an end: whereas we are wont to
take it the other way, and think the result something, but the means a
weariness. Out of all come strength, and the cheerfulness of strength. I
murmured not a little, to say the truth, under these enumerations, at
first. But now I think that not only is their purpose a justification, but
that the musical ear and vividness of perception of the poet have enabled
him to perform this task also with strength and grace, and that they are
harmonious as well as necessary parts of the great whole.
Nor do I sympathize with those who grumble at the unexpected words that
turn up now and then. A quarrel with words is always, more or less, a
quarrel with meanings; and here we are to be as genial and as wide as
nature, and quarrel with nothing. If the thing a word stands for exists by
divine appointment (and what does not so exist?), the word need never be
ashamed of itself; the shorter and more direct, the better. It is a gain
to make friends with it, and see it in good company. Here at all events,
"poetic diction" would not serve,--not pretty, soft, colourless words,
laid by in lavender for the special uses of poetry, that have had none of
the wear and tear of daily life; but such as have stood most, as tell of
human heart-beats, as fit closest to the sense, and have taken deep hues
of association from the varied experiences of life--those are the words
wanted here. We only ask to seize and be seized swiftly, over-masteringly,
by the great meanings. We see with the eyes of the soul, listen with the
ears of the soul; the poor old words that have served so many generations
for purposes, good, bad, and indifferent, and become warped and blurred in
the process, grow young again, regenerate, translucent. It is not mere
delight they give us,--_that_ the "sweet singers," with their subtly
wrought gifts, their mellifluous speech, can give too in their degree; it
is such life and health as enable us to pluck delights for ourselves out
of every hour of the day, and taste the sunshine that ripened the corn in
the crust we eat (I often seem to myself to do that).
Out of the scorn of the present came skepticism; and out of the large,
loving acceptance of it comes faith. If _now_ is so great and beautiful, I
need no arguments to make me believe that the _nows_ of the past and of
the future were and will be great and beautiful, too.
"I know I am deathless.
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's compass.
I know I shall not pass, like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick
at night.
I know I am august.
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.
"My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite:
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of Time."
"No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and Death."
You argued rightly that my confidence would not be betrayed by any of the
poems in this book. None of them troubled me even for a moment; because I
saw at a glance that it was not, as men had supposed, the heights brought
down to the depths, but the depths lifted up level with the sunlit
heights, that they might become clear and sunlit, too. Always, for a
woman, a veil woven out of her own soul--never touched upon even, with a
rough hand, by this poet. But, for a man, a daring, fearless pride in
himself, not a mock-modesty woven out of delusions--a very poor imitation
of a woman's. Do they not see that this fearless pride, this complete
acceptance of themselves, is needful for her pride, her justification?
What! is it all so ignoble, so base, that it will not bear the honest
light of speech from lips so gifted with "the divine power to use words?"
Then what hateful, bitter humiliation for her, to have to give herself up
to the reality! Do you think there is ever a bride who does not taste more
or less this bitterness in her cup? But who put it there? It must surely
be man's fault, not God's, that she has to say to herself, "Soul, look
another way--you have no part in this. Motherhood is beautiful, fatherhood
is beautiful; but the dawn of fatherhood and motherhood is not beautiful."
Do they really think that God is ashamed of what he has made and
appointed? And, if not, surely it is somewhat superfluous that they should
undertake to be so for him.
"The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,"
Of a woman above all. It is true that instinct of silence I spoke of is a
beautiful, imperishable part of nature, too. But it is not beautiful when
it means an ignominious shame brooding darkly. Shame is like a very
flexible veil, that follows faithfully the shape of what it
covers,--beautiful when it hides a beautiful thing, ugly when it hides an
ugly one. It has not covered what was beautiful here; it has covered a
mean distrust of a man's self and of his Creator. It was needed that this
silence, this evil spell, should for once be broken, and the daylight let
in, that the dark cloud lying under might be scattered to the winds. It
was needed that one who could here indicate for us "the path between
reality and the soul" should speak. That is what these beautiful, despised
poems, the "Children of Adam," do, read by the light that glows out of the
rest of the volume: light of a clear, strong faith in God, of an
unfathomably deep and tender love for humanity,--light shed out of a soul
that is "possessed of itself."
"Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating for ever the triumph of things."
Now silence may brood again; but lovingly, happily, as protecting what is
beautiful, not as hiding what is unbeautiful; consciously enfolding a
sweet and sacred mystery--august even as the mystery of Death, the dawn as
the setting: kindred grandeurs, which to eyes that are opened shed a
hallowing beauty on all that surrounds and preludes them.
"O vast and well-veiled Death!
"O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
for reasons!"
He who can thus look with fearlessness at the beauty of Death may well
dare to teach us to look with fearless, untroubled eyes at the perfect
beauty of Love in all its appointed realizations. Now none need turn away
their thoughts with pain or shame; though only lovers and poets may say
what they will,--the lover to his own, the poet to all, because all are in
a sense his own. None need fear that this will be harmful to the woman.
How should there be such a flaw in the scheme of creation that, for the
two with whom there is no complete life, save in closest sympathy, perfect
union, what is natural and happy for the one should be baneful to the
other? The utmost faithful freedom of speech, such as there is in these
poems, creates in her no thought or feeling that shuns the light of
heaven, none that are not as innocent and serenely fair as the flowers
that grow; would lead, not to harm, but to such deep and tender affection
as makes harm or the thought of harm simply impossible. Far more beautiful
care than man is aware of has been taken in the making of her, to fit her
to be his mate. God has taken such care that _he_ need take none; none,
that is, which consists in disguisement, insincerity, painful hushing-up
of his true, grand, initiating nature. And, as regards the poet's
utterances, which, it might be thought, however harmless in themselves,
would prove harmful by falling into the hands of those for whom they are
manifestly unsuitable, I believe that even here fear is needless. For her
innocence is folded round with such thick folds of ignorance, till the
right way and time for it to accept knowledge, that what is unsuitable is
also unintelligible to her; and, if no dark shadow from without be cast on
the white page by misconstruction or by foolish mystery and hiding away of
it, no hurt will ensue from its passing freely through her hands.
This is so, though it is little understood or realized by men. Wives and
mothers will learn through the poet that there is rejoicing grandeur and
beauty there wherein their hearts have so longed to find it; where foolish
men, traitors to themselves, poorly comprehending the grandeur of their
own or the beauty of a woman's nature, have taken such pains to make her
believe there was none,--nothing but miserable discrepancy.
One of the hardest things to make a child understand is, that down
underneath your feet, if you go far enough, you come to blue sky and stars
again; that there really is no "down" for the world, but only in every
direction an "up." And that this is an all-embracing truth, including
within its scope every created thing, and, with deepest significance,
every part, faculty, attribute, healthful impulse, mind, and body of a
man (each and all facing towards and related to the Infinite on every
side), is what we grown children find it hardest to realize, too. Novalis
said, "We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the human body"; which, if
it mean anything, must mean an ample justification of the poet who has
dared to be the poet of the body as well as of the soul,--to treat it with
the freedom and grandeur of an ancient sculptor.
"Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy of the muse:--I say the
form complete is worthier far.
"These are not parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.
"O, I say now these are soul."
But while Novalis--who gazed at the truth a long way off, up in the air,
in a safe, comfortable, German fashion--has been admiringly quoted by high
authorities, the great American who has dared to rise up and wrestle with
it, and bring it alive and full of power in the midst of us, has been
greeted with a very different kind of reception, as has happened a few
times before in the world in similar cases. Yet I feel deeply persuaded
that a perfectly fearless, candid, ennobling treatment of the life of the
body (so inextricably intertwined with, so potent in its influence on the
life of the soul) will prove of inestimable value to all earnest and
aspiring natures, impatient of the folly of the long-prevalent belief that
it is because of the greatness of the spirit that it has learned to
despise the body, and to ignore its influences; knowing well that it is,
on the contrary, just because the spirit is not great enough, not healthy
and vigorous enough, to transfuse itself into the life of the body,
elevating that and making it holy by its own triumphant intensity;
knowing, too, how the body avenges this by dragging the soul down to the
level assigned itself. Whereas the spirit must lovingly embrace the body,
as the roots of a tree embrace the ground, drawing thence rich
nourishment, warmth, impulse. Or, rather, the body is itself the root of
the soul--that whereby it grows and feeds. The great tide of healthful
life that carries all before it must surge through the whole man, not beat
to and fro in one corner of his brain.
"O the life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh!"
For the sake of all that is highest, a truthful recognition of this life,
and especially of that of it which underlies the fundamental ties of
humanity--the love of husband and wife, fatherhood, motherhood--is needed.
Religion needs it, now at last alive to the fact that the basis of all
true worship is comprised in "the great lesson of reception, neither
preference nor denial," interpreting, loving, rejoicing in all that is
created, fearing and despising nothing.
"I accept reality, and dare not question it."
The dignity of a man, the pride and affection of a woman, need it too. And
so does the intellect. For science has opened up such elevating views of
the mystery of material existence that, if poetry had not bestirred
herself to handle this theme in her own way, she would have been left
behind by her plodding sister. Science knows that matter is not, as we
fancied, certain stolid atoms which the forces of nature vibrate through
and push and pull about; but that the forces and the atoms are one
mysterious, imperishable identity, neither conceivable without the other.
She knows, as well as the poet, that destructibility is not one of
nature's words; that it is only the relationship of things--tangibility,
visibility--that are transitory. She knows that body and soul are one, and
proclaims it undauntedly, regardless, and rightly regardless, of
inferences. Timid onlookers, aghast, think it means that soul is
body--means death for the soul. But the poet knows it means body is
soul--the great whole imperishable; in life and in death continually
changing substance, always retaining identity. For, if the man of science
is happy about the atoms, if he is not baulked or baffled by apparent
decay or destruction, but can see far enough into the dimness to know that
not only is each atom imperishable, but that its endowments,
characteristics, affinities, electric and other attractions and
repulsions--however suspended, hid, dormant, masked, when it enters into
new combinations--remain unchanged, be it for thousands of years, and,
when it is again set free, manifest themselves in the old way, shall not
the poet be happy about the vital whole? shall the highest force, the
vital, that controls and compels into complete subservience for its own
purposes the rest, be the only one that is destructible? and the love and
thought that endow the whole be less enduring than the gravitating,
chemical, electric powers that endow its atoms? But identity is the
essence of love and thought--I still I, you still you. Certainly no man
need ever again be scared by the "dark hush" and the little handful of
refuse.
"You are not scattered to the winds--you gather certainly and safely
around yourself."
"Sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together."
"All goes onward and outward: nothing collapses."
"What I am, I am of my body; and what I shall be, I shall be of my
body."
"The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul."
Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air,
power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and
is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward "the superb vistas of death." He
knows that "the perpetual transfers and promotions" and "the amplitude of
time" are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with
unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words.
But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science
furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion.
Both together are "swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all
the past." But, while the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of
his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself--"Death making him
really undying." He will "stand as nigh as the nighest" to these men and
women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and
soul into theirs, that "love of comrades" which, like the "soft-born
measureless light," makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates
to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a
genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of
Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a "new and
superb friendship"; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man's
self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no
longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God's smile, and
sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and
tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that "wisdom
which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of
the excellence of things." Happy America, that he should be her son! One
sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind
of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible
vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for
one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is
the old English giant--the great English race renewing its youth in that
magnificent land, "Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced," and girding up its
loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the
new home.
A CONFESSION OF FAITH[2]
"Of genius in the Fine Arts," wrote Wordsworth, "the only infallible sign
is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour,
and benefit of human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element
into the intellectual universe, or, if that be not allowed, it is the
application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance or conquest made
by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that the reader can make
progress of this kind like an Indian prince or general stretched on his
palanquin and borne by slaves? No; he is invigorated and inspirited by his
leader in order that he may exert himself, for he cannot proceed in
quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create
taste is to call forth and bestow power."
A great poet, then, is "a challenge and summons"; and the question first
of all is not whether we like or dislike him, but whether we are capable
of meeting that challenge, of stepping out of our habitual selves to
answer that summons. He works on Nature's plan: Nature, who teaches
nothing but supplies infinite material to learn from; who never preaches
but drives home her meanings by the resistless eloquence of effects.
Therefore the poet makes greater demands upon his reader than any other
man. For it is not a question of swallowing his ideas or admiring his
handiwork merely, but of seeing, feeling, enjoying, as he sees, feels,
enjoys. "The messages of great poems to each man and woman are," says Walt
Whitman, "come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We
are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may
enjoy"--no better than you potentially, that is; but if you would
understand us the potential must become the actual, the dormant sympathies
must awaken and broaden, the dulled perceptions clear themselves and let
in undreamed of delights, the wonder-working imagination must respond, the
ear attune itself, the languid soul inhale large draughts of love and hope
and courage, those "empyreal airs" that vitalize the poet's world. No
wonder the poet is long in finding his audience; no wonder he has to abide
the "inexorable tests of Time," which, if indeed he be great, slowly turns
the handful into hundreds, the hundreds into thousands, and at last having
done its worst, grudgingly passes him on into the ranks of the Immortals.
Meanwhile let not the handful who believe that such a destiny awaits a man
of our time cease to give a reason for the faith that is in them.