I believe it was the lamented Professor Clifford who first used the term
"cosmic emotion" in connection with "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's
atmosphere is so distinctly outside of and above that which ministers to
our social and domestic wants,--the confined and perfumed air of an indoor
life; his mood and temper are so habitually begotten by the contemplation
of the orbs and the laws and processes of universal nature, that the
phrase often comes to mind in considering him. He is not in any sense,
except perhaps in a few minor pieces, a domestic and fireside poet,--a
solace to our social instincts and cultivated ideals. He is too large, too
aboriginal, too elemental, too strong for that. I seem to understand and
appreciate him best when I keep in mind the earth as a whole, and its
relation to the system. Any large view or thought, or survey of life or
mankind, is a preparation for him. He demands the outdoor temper and
habit, he demands a sense of space and power, he demands above all things
a feeling for reality. "Vastness" is a word that applies to him; abysmal
man, cosmic consciousness, the standards of the natural universal,--all
hint some phase of his genius. His survey of life and duty is from a point
not included in any four walls, or in any school or convention. It is a
survey from out the depths of being; the breath of worlds and systems is
in these utterances. His treatment of sex, of comradeship, of death, of
democracy, of religion, of art, of immortality, is in the spirit of the
great out-of-doors of the universe; the point of view is cosmic rather
than personal or philanthropic. What charity is this!--the charity of
sunlight that spares nothing and turns away from nothing. What "heroic
nudity"! like the nakedness of rocks and winter trees. What sexuality!
like the lust of spring or the push of tides. What welcome to death, as
only the night which proves the day!