Whitman's relation to science is fundamental and vital. It is the soil
under his feet. He comes into a world from which all childish fear and
illusion has been expelled. He exhibits the religious and poetic faculties
perfectly adjusted to a scientific, industrial, democratic age, and
exhibits them more fervent and buoyant than ever before. We have gained
more than we have lost. The world is anew created by science and
democracy, and he pronounces it good with the joy and fervor of the old
faith.
He shared with Tennyson the glory of being one of the two poets of note in
our time who have drawn inspiration from this source, or viewed the
universe through the vistas which science opens. Renan thought the modern
poetic or imaginative contemplation of the universe puerile and factitious
compared with the scientific contemplation of it. The one, he said, was
stupendous; the other childish and empty. But Whitman and Tennyson were
fully abreast with science, and often afford one a sweep of vision that
matches the best science can do. Tennyson drew upon science more for his
images and illustrations than Whitman did; he did not absorb and
appropriate its results in the wholesale way of the latter. Science fed
Whitman's imagination and made him bold; its effects were moral and
spiritual. On Tennyson its effects were mainly intellectual; it enlarged
his vocabulary without strengthening his faith. Indeed, one would say,
from certain passages in "In Memoriam," that it had distinctly weakened
his faith. Let us note for a moment the different ways these two poets use
science. In his poem to Fitzgerald, Tennyson draws upon the nebular
hypothesis for an image:--
"A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it, that large infidel
Your Omar."
In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
"of an earth that is dead."
"The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."