"Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:--
"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate
the theory of the earth,
No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless
it compares with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
earth."
No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with
these and kindred passages:--
"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has
the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of
poems, the Answerer,
(Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day,
for all its names.)
* * * * *
"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of
beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness
of body, withdrawnness,
Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all
these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything
else.
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain,
love-sick.
They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the
outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to
learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings
and never be quiet again.
* * * * *
"Of these States the poet is the equable man,
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of
their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more
nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce,
lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality,
government,
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as
the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a
helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as
dreams or dots.
* * * * *
"Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass
away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's
idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the
beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in
centuries.
We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in
these lines of Tennyson:--
"The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's
pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.
Whitman's ideal poet is the most composite man, rich in temperament, rank
in the human attributes, embracing races and eras in himself. All men see
themselves in him:--
"The mechanic takes him for a mechanic,
And the soldier supposes him to be a soldier, and the sailor that he
has followed the sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has
followed it,
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
there.
* * * * *
"The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so
grown."
Let us hold the poet to his own ideals, and not condemn him because he has
not aimed at something foreign to himself.
The questions which Whitman puts to him who would be an American poet may
fairly be put to himself.
"Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what the land and sea, the
bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce
contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the whole
people?
Are you not of some coterie? some school, or mere religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to
life itself?
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
Have you, too, the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
* * * * *
What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better done or told before?
Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause
in it?
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
literats of enemies' lands?
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
strength, gait, face?
Have real employments contributed to it? Original makers, not mere
amanuenses?
So far as Whitman's poetry falls within any of the old divisions it is
lyrical,--a personal and individual utterance. Open the book anywhere and
you are face to face with a man. His eye is fixed upon you. It is a man's
voice you hear, and it is directed to _you_. He is not elaborating a
theme: he is suggesting a relation or hinting a meaning. He is not
chiseling, or carving a work of art: he is roughly outlining a man; he is
planting a seed, or tilling a field.