"I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
pass'd the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
night under my ear."
Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
free-careering forces of nature.
I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
like him best without it.