"The fires that arch this dusky dot--
Yon myriad-worlded way--
The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
World-isles in lonely skies,
Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
Our brief humanities."
As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--
"I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
esculent roots,
And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.
"In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
* * * * *
"I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
"Long I was hugged close--long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
"Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it.
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long, slow strata piled to rest it in,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with
care.
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of
the farther systems:
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward, outward, and forever outward:
My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels;
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage.
If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float,
it would not avail in the long run.
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
hazard the span or make it impatient.
They are but parts--anything is but a part,
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."
In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is
always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of
the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance which the
man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality
has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does
not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional
realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man
refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the
presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all
directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the
"full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
outside of itself.
"I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."