Call his work poetry or prose, or what you will: that it is an inspired
utterance of some sort, any competent person ought to be able to see. And
what else do we finally demand of any work than that it be inspired? How
all questions of form and art, and all other questions, sink into
insignificance beside that! The exaltation of mind and spirit shown in the
main body of Whitman's work, the genuine, prophetic fervor, the
intensification and amplification of the simple ego, and the resultant
raising of all human values, seem to me as plain as daylight.
Whitman is to be classed among the great names by the breadth and
all-inclusiveness of his theme and by his irrepressible personality. I
think it highly probable that future scholars and critics will find his
work fully as significant and era-marking as that of any of the few
supreme names of the past. It is the culmination of an age of
individualism, and, as opposites meet, it is also the best lesson in
nationalism and universal charity that this century has seen.