America does not repel the past, or what the past has produced under
its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old
religions--accepts the lesson with calmness--is not impatient because
the slough still sticks to opinions and manners in literature, while the
life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms--perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house--perceives that it waits a little while
in the door--that it was fittest for its days--that its action has
descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches--and that
he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto,
the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here
is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and
details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality which
for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial,
unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and
the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth,
and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must
indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be
bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples,
or the bays contain fish, or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the genius of
the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures,
nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or churches or parlors,
nor even in its newspapers or inventors--but always most in the common
people, south, north, west, east, in all its States, through all its
mighty amplitude. The largeness of the nation, however, were monstrous
without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the
citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous
business, nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may suffice for the
ideal of man--nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice
either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best
authority the cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of
the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and
grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to
trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the
beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the
mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the
opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired
in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the
antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of
the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all
returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography
or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of
full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple. The
American poets are to enclose old and new, for America is the race of
races. The expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and
new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its
quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other
nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and
that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here
the theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat
of custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates.
Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach
he stands, turning a concentrated light--he turns the pivot with
his finger--he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily
overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying toward infidelity and
confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the
antiseptic of the soul--it pervades the common people and preserves
them--they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There
is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate
person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive
genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be
just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.
The power to destroy or remould is freely used by the greatest poet, but
seldom the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose
superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not
what is wanted. The presence of the great poet conquers--not parleying,
or struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see
after him! There is not left any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or
cunning, or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or color, or
delusion of hell or the necessity of hell--and no man thenceforward
shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest poet
hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that
was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the
universe. He is a seer--he is individual--he is complete in himself--the
others are as good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is
not one of the chorus--he does not stop for any regulation--he is the
president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest, he does
to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other
senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but
its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A
single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all
the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What
is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or
vague--after you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and
given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things
enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or
jostling or jam?
The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and
the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small themes--but
folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity
which always attach to dumb real objects--they expect him to indicate
the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the
beauty well enough--probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of
hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and
fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old
varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence
of the poetic in out-door people. They can never be assisted by poets
to perceive--some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not
marshal'd in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor
in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these
and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops
seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it
conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme
and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws,
and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a
bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges,
and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The
fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or
recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes
from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are
in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail
through the universe; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will
not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is
lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the
stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or
number of men--go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the
young, and with the mothers of families--re-examine all you have been
told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults
your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the
richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its
lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion
and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded
work. He shall know that the ground is already plough'd and manured;
others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the
creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches--and
shall master all attachment.
The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest
poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chance
happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and
persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks
others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy.
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his
proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest, he is rapport
with in the sight of the daybreak, or the scenes of the winter woods,
or the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a
man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse--he leaves
room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover--he is
sure--he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills
are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him--suffering and darkness
cannot--death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy
are corpses buried and rotten in the earth--he saw them buried. The
sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea, than he is the
fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty.
The fruition of beauty is no chance of miss or hit--it is as inevitable
as life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight
proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another
hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of
the harmony of things with man. These understand the law of perfection
in masses and floods--that it is profuse and impartial--that there is
not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth and sea,
without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment,
nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper
expression of beauty there is precision and balance. One part does not
need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has
the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure of poems is not in them
that take the handsomest measure and sound.
Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the
greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and
scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual
character as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the
laws that pursue and follow Time. What is the purpose must surely be
there, and the clue of it must be there--and the faintest indication is
the indication of the best, and then becomes the clearest indication.
Past and present and future are not disjoin'd but join'd. The greatest
poet forms the consistence of what is to be, from what has been and is.
He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their
feet. He says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize
you. He learns the lesson--he places himself where the future becomes
present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character
and scenes and passions--he finally ascends, and finishes all--he
exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for, or
what is beyond--he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most
wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown; by that flash of the
moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified
afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make
applications of morals--he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless
pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons or deductions
but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and
the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it
stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep
with the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they
are vital in his style and thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of
letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing can
make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the
heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects
their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But
to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of
the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of
trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph
of art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it you have look'd
on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You
shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay, or the
mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers
on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven,
or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than
you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style,
and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or
diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I
will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or
effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like
curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or
startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat
or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or
portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved
by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and
out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the
traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians,
inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing
from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics,
mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native
grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever
who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest
expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes
one.
The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on
equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than
you, what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did
you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more
than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good or
grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What
do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and the throes of human
desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the
soul which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and
everywhere--Master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the
sea, Master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all
pain.
The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, and
for encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or
secrecy, glad to pass anything to any one--hungry for equals night and
day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall be
riches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent man
is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees
by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard
shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of
interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor the body
most--and not be for the Eastern States more than the Western, or the
Northern States more than the Southern.
Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the
greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and
remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, and braced
him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The
sailor and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist,
phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer,
are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their
construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter
what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conception of it--of
them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be
love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness
of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be
love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty
of poems are henceforth the tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation
of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells
the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. The depths
are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are
resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of
the supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it,
departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, and whatever
may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They are sufficient for
any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any special
miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme
where every motion and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits
of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect
miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It
is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there
is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as they
are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis
philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what
is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of
all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and
of astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief,
the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through this life and doubtless
afterward--or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of
density, or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever
would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against
some being or influence, is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble
characterize the great master--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt.
The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health
for himself in being one of the mass--he sees the hiatus in singular
eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the
general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master
knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably
great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children,
and bring them up well--that to _be_ is just as great as to perceive or
tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more
than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out
of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they
must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or
degrade it.
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real
body, and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts
are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile
light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many
fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process
exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the
carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd
beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam
with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions and actions with
theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and
coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of
use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
You large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than
any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title
to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of
the library, (indeed he or she alone is owner,) who can read the same
through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in
whom they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and rich and
large.
These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shall
receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not
permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns of
woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or
to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns of ships,
or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which
distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or
contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially,
it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work
nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornaments can be allow'd that
conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the
nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary
to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without
ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and
vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'd only in those communities
where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and
the people of these States must never be demean'd to romances. As soon
as histories are properly told, no more need of romances.
The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by
the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be forgiven
of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we
have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there
is no single exception, and that never since our earth gather'd itself
in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its
smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the
enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole republic of states,
a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and despised--and that the
soul has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd--and thrift
without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff--and there
never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet
or satellite, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes,
nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of
abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of formation or
reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and
comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness
and destuctiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of
nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs,
are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of
the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb, and from her
birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been
thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to
solid gains, and did well for himself and for his family, and completed
a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits
these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has
higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives
a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the
prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and
harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for
burial-money, and of a few clap-boards around and shingles overhead on a
lot of American soil own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the year's
plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment
of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of years of
money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all
their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of
parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of
the bloom and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and
of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or
have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and
desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naivety,
(even if you have achiev'd a secure 10,000 a year, or election to
Congress or the Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death
without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization
and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization
undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it
spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the
soul.
Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The
prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'd life
appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little and large
alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for
immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or
seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming
back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents,
and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look, in every
direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all
else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is
of consequence. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be
anything else' than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument
to hand or no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or
divide is in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black,
legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the
windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female
does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit
to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the
whole scope of it forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers
at last the craving and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits
no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or
judgment day, divides not the living from the dead, or the righteous
from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every
thought or act by its correlative, and knows no possible forgiveness or
deputed atonement.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If
he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
tides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him is not
open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations
and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of
time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness
in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of
life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall
be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour,
and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge
in the general run, and wait his development.
Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The
prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or
performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does
it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of
genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens
and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right
hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after
he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman
think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and
complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a
man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or
woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last
under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and
realize, and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest
poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease.
The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he
takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously
unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space and ineffable
sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there
shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the
younger and shows him how--they two shall launch off fearlessly together
till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the
lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and
shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend
immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the
exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America,
and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race
who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of
political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted
the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues.
It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect of common
sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of
all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith,
self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude,
prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall wellnigh
express the inexpressible.
No great literature, nor any like style of behavior or oratory, or
social intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions,
or the treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail,
or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts,
or police or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can long
elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether
or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live
interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart, after that which
passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country?
Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the
ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud,
beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown
fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea for use to me to-day
here? I know that what answers for me, an American, in Texas, Ohio,
Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part
of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for the nursing of the young of
the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples
of the breasts of the Mother of Many Children?
America prepares with Composure and good-will for the visitors that have
sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome.
The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the
erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their
work. The soul of the nation also does its work. It rejects none, it
permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An
individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make
a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest
nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets.
PREFACE, 1872 To As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free Now Thou Mother with
thy Equal Brood, _in permanent edition_.
The impetus and ideas urging me, for some years past, to an utterance,
or attempt at utterance, of New World songs, and an epic of Democracy,
having already had their publish'd expression, as well as I can expect
to give it, in "Leaves of Grass," the present and any future pieces from
me are really but the surplusage forming after that volume, or the wake
eddying behind it. I fulfill'd in that an imperious conviction, and the
commands of my nature as total and irresistible as those which make
the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of this supplementary volume,
I confess I am not so certain. Having from early manhood abandon'd the
business pursuits and applications usual in my time and country, and
obediently yielded myself up ever since to the impetus mention'd, and
to the work of expressing those ideas, it may be that mere habit has got
dominion of me, when there is no real need of saying anything further.
But what is life but an experiment? and mortality but an exercise? with
reference to results beyond. And so shall my poems be. If incomplete
here, and superfluous there, _n' importe_--the earnest trial and
persistent exploration shall at least be mine, and other success failing
shall be success enough. I have been more anxious, anyhow, to suggest
the songs of vital endeavor and manly evolution, and furnish something
for races of outdoor athletes, than to make perfect rhymes, or reign
in the parlors. I ventur'd from the beginning my own way, taking
chances--and would keep on venturing.
I will therefore not conceal from any persons, known or unknown to me,
who take an interest in the matter, that I have the ambition of devoting
yet a few years to poetic composition. The mighty present age! To absorb
and express in poetry, anything of it--of its world--America--cities and
States--the years, the events of our Nineteeth century--the rapidity
of movement--the violent contrasts, fluctuations of light and shade,
of hope and fear--the entire revolution made by science in the poetic
method--these great new underlying facts and new ideas rushing and
spreading everywhere;--truly a mighty age! As if in some colossal drama,
acted again like those of old under the open sun, the Nations of our
time, and all the characteristics of Civilization, seem hurrying,
stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing up,
toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement. Not to conclude
the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil and happiness and
sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd from oldest, worst
incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternal play anew, and
under happier, freer auspices. To me, the United States are important
because in this colossal drama they are unquestionably designated for
the leading parts, for many a century to come. In them history and
humanity seem to seek to culminate. Our broad areas are even now the
busy theatre of plots, passions, interests, and suspended problems,
compared to which the intrigues of the past of Europe, the wars of
dynasties, the scope of kings and kingdoms, and even the development of
peoples, as hitherto, exhibit scales of measurement comparatively narrow
and trivial. And on these areas of ours, as on a stage, sooner or later,
something like an _eclairissement_ of all the past civilization of
Europe and Asia is probably to be evolved.
The leading parts. Not to be acted, emulated here, by us again, that
role till now foremost in history--not to become a conqueror nation,
or to achieve the glory of mere military, or diplomatic, or commercial
superiority--but to become the grand producing land of nobler men and
women--of copious races, cheerful, healthy, tolerant, free--to become
the most friendly nation, (the United States indeed)--the modern
composite nation, form'd from all, with room for all, welcoming all
immigrants--accepting the work of our own interior development, as the
work fitly filling ages and ages to come;--the leading nation of peace,
but neither ignorant nor incapable of being the leading nation of
war;--not the man's nation only, but the woman's nation--a land of
splendid mothers, daughters, sisters, wives.
Our America to-day I consider in many respects as but indeed a vast
seething mass of _materials_, ampler, better, (worse also,) than
previously known--eligible to be used to carry towards its crowning
stage, and build for good, the great ideal nationality of the future,
the nation of the body and the soul,[32]--no limit here to land, help,
opportunities, mines, products, demands, supplies, etc.;--with (I think)
our political organization, National, State, and Municipal, permanently
establish'd, as far ahead as we can calculate--but, so far, no social,
literary, religious, or esthetic organizations, consistent with our
politics, or becoming to us--which organizations can only come, in time,
through great democratic ideas, religion--through science, which now,
like a new sunrise, ascending, begins to illuminate all--and through our
own begotten poets and literatuses. (The moral of a late well-written
book on civilization seems to be that the only real foundation-walls and
bases--and also _sine qua non_ afterward--of true and full civilization,
is the eligibility and certainty of boundless products for feeding,
clothing, sheltering everybody--perennial fountains of physical
and domestic comfort, with intercommunication, and with civil and
ecclesiastical freedom--and that then the esthetic and mental business
will take care of itself. Well, the United States have establish'd this
basis, and upon scales of extent, variety, vitality, and continuity,
rivaling those of Nature; and have now to proceed to build an
edifice upon it. I say this edifice is only to be fitly built by new
literatures, especially the poetic. I say a modern image-making creation
is indispensable to fuse and express the modern political and scientific
creations--and then the trinity will be complete.)
When I commenced, years ago, elaborating the plan of my poems, and
continued turning over that plan, and shifting it in my mind through
many years, (from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five,) experimenting
much, and writing and abandoning much, one deep purpose underlay the
others, and has underlain it and its execution ever since--and that has
been the religious purpose. Amid many changes, and a formulation taking
far different shape from what I at first supposed, this basic purpose
has never been departed from in the composition of my verses. Not of
course to exhibit itself in the old ways, as in writing hymns or psalms
with an eye to the church-pew, or to express conventional pietism, or
the sickly yearnings of devotees, but in new ways, and aiming at the
widest sub-bases and inclusions of humanity, and tallying the fresh air
of sea and land. I will see, (said I to myself,) whether there is not,
for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound religious germenancy
in the average human race, at least in their modern development in the
United States, and in the hardy common fiber and native yearnings and
elements, deeper and larger, and affording more profitable returns, than
all mere sects or churches--as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature
itself--a germenancy that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost
unknown. With science, the old theology of the East, long in its dotage,
begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind) science--and
may-be such will prove its principal service--as evidently prepares
the way for One indescribably grander--Time's young but perfect
offspring--the new theology--heir of the West--lusty and loving, and
wondrous beautiful. For America, and for today, just the same as any
day, the supreme and final science is the science of God--what we call
science being only its minister--as Democracy is, or shall be also. And
a poet of America (I said) must fill himself with such thoughts, and
chant his best out of them. And as those were the convictions and aims,
for good or bad, of "Leaves of Grass," they are no less the intention
of this volume. As there can be, in my opinion, no sane and complete
personality, nor any grand and electric nationality, without the stock
element of religion imbuing all the other elements, (like heat in
chemistry, invisible itself, but the life of all visible life,) so there
can be no poetry worthy the name without that element behind all. The
time has certainly come to begin to discharge the idea of religion,
in the United States, from mere ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and
churches and church-going, and assign it to that general position,
chiefest, most indispensable, most exhilarating, to which the others
are to be adjusted, inside of all human character, and education, and
affairs. The people, especially the young men and women of America,
must begin to learn that religion, (like poetry,) is something far, far
different from what they supposed. It is, indeed, too important to the
power and perpetuity of the New World to be consign'd any longer to the
churches, old or new, Catholic or Protestant--Saint this, or Saint
that. It must be consign'd henceforth to democracy _en masse_, and to
literature. It must enter into the poems of the nation. It must make the
nation.
The Four Years' War is over--and in the peaceful, strong, exciting,
fresh occasions of to-day, and of the future, that strange, sad war is
hurrying even now to be forgotten. The camp, the drill, the lines of
sentries, the prisons, the hospitals--(ah! the hospitals!)--all have
passed away--all seem now like a dream. A new race, a young and lusty
generation, already sweeps in with oceanic currents, obliterating the
war, and all its scars, its mounded graves, and all its reminiscences of
hatred, conflict, death. So let It be obliterated. I say the life of the
present and the future makes undeniable demands upon us each and all,
south, north, east, west. To help put the United States (even if only in
imagination) hand in hand, in one unbroken circle in a chant--to rouse
them to the unprecedented grandeur of the part they are to play, and are
even now playing--to the thought of their great future, and the attitude
conform'd to it--especially their great esthetic, moral, scientific
future, (of which their vulgar material and political present is but
as the preparatory tuning of instruments by an orchestra,) these, as
hitherto, are still, for me, among my hopes, ambitions.
"Leaves of Grass," already publish'd, is, in its intentions, the song of
a great composite _democratic individual_, male or female. And following
on and amplifying the same purpose, I suppose I have in my mind to
run through the chants of this volume, (if ever completed,) the
thread-voice, more or less audible, of an aggregated, inseparable,
unprecedented, vast, composite, electric _democratic nationality_.
Purposing, then, to still fill out, from time to time through years to
come, the following volume, (unless prevented,) I conclude this
preface to the first instalment of it, pencil'd in the open air, on my
fifty-third birth-day, by wafting to you, dear reader, whoever you are,
(from amid the fresh scent of the grass, the pleasant coolness of the
forenoon breeze, the lights and shades of tree-boughs silently dappling
and playing around me, and the notes of the cat-bird for undertone and
accompaniment,) my true good-will and love. W. W. _Washington, D. C.,
May_ 31, 1872.
Note:
[32] The problems of the achievements of this crowning stage through
future first-class National Singers, Orators, Artists, and others--of
creating in literature an _imaginative_ New World, the correspondent and
counterpart of the current Scientific and Political New Worlds,--and the
perhaps distant, but still delightful prospect, (for our children, if
not in our own day,) of delivering America, and, indeed, all Christian
lands everywhere, from the thin moribund and watery, but appallingly
extensive nuisance of conventional poetry--by putting something really
alive and substantial in its place--I have undertaken to grapple with,
and argue, in the preceding "Democratic Vistas."
PREFACE, 1876 _To the two-volume Centennial Edition of_ Leaves of Grass
_and_ Two Rivulets.
At the eleventh hour, under grave illness, I gather up the pieces of
prose and poetry left over since publishing, a while since, my first and
main volume, "Leaves or Grass"--pieces, here, some new, some old--nearly
all of them (sombre as many are, making this almost death's book)
composed in by-gone atmospheres of perfect health--and preceded by
the freshest collection, the little "Two Rivulets," now send them
out, embodied in the present melange, partly as my contribution and
outpouring to celebrate, in some sort, the feature of the time, the
first centennial of our New World nationality--and then as chyle and
nutriment to that moral, indissoluble union, equally representing all,
and the mother of many coming centennials.
And e'en for flush and proof of our America--for reminder, just as much,
or more, in moods of towering pride and joy, I keep my special chants of
death and immortality[33] to stamp the coloring-finish of all, present
and past. For terminus and temperer to all, they were originally
written; and that shall be their office at the last.
For some reason--not explainable or definite to my own mind, yet
secretly pleasing and satisfactory to it--I have not hesitated to
embody in, and run through the volume, two altogether distinct veins,
or strata--politics for one, and for the other, the pensive thought
of immortality. Thus, too, the prose and poetic, the dual forms of the
present book. The volume, therefore, after its minor episodes, probably
divides into these two, at first sight far diverse, veins of topic and
treatment. Three points, in especial, have become very dear to me,
and all through I seek to make them again and again, in many forms and
repetitions, as will be seen: 1. That the true growth-characteristics
of the democracy of the New World are henceforth to radiate in superior
literary, artistic and religious expressions, far more than in its
republican forms, universal suffrage, and frequent elections, (though
these are unspeakably important.) 2. That the vital political mission of
the United States is, to practically solve and settle the problem of
two sets of rights--the fusion, thorough compatibility and junction
of individual State prerogatives, with the indispensable necessity
of centrality and Oneness--the national identity power--the sovereign
Union, relentless, permanently comprising all, and over all, and in that
never yielding an inch: then 3d. Do we not, amid a general malaria of
fogs and vapors, our day, unmistakably see two pillars of promise, with
grandest, indestructible indications--one, that the morbid facts of
American politics and society everywhere are but passing incidents and
flanges of our unbounded impetus of growth? weeds, annuals, of the rank,
rich soil--not central, enduring, perennial things? The other, that all
the hitherto experience of the States, their first century, has been
but preparation, adolescence--and that this Union is only now and
henceforth, (_i.e._, since the secession war,) to enter on its full
democratic career?
Of the whole, poems and prose, (not attending at all to chronological
order, and with original dates and passing allusions in the heat and
impression of the hour, left shuffled in, and undisturb'd,) the chants
of "Leaves of Grass," my former volume, yet serve as the indispensable
deep soil, or basis, out of which, and out of which only, could come the
roots and stems more definitely indicated by these later pages. (While
that volume radiates physiology alone, the present one, though of the
like origin in the main, more palpably doubtless shows the pathology
which was pretty sure to come in time from the other.)
In that former and main volume, composed in the flush of my health and
strength, from the age of 30 to 50 years, I dwelt on birth and life,
clothing my ideas in pictures, days, transactions of my time, to give
them positive place, identity--saturating them with that vehemence
of pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind
of still-to-be-form'd America from the accumulated folds, the
superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stifling anti-democratic
authorities of the Asiatic and European past--my enclosing purport being
to express, above all artificial regulation and aid, the eternal bodily
composite, cumulative, natural character of one's self.[34]
Estimating the American Union as so far, and for some time to come, in
its yet formative condition, I bequeath poems and essays as nutriment
and influences to help truly assimilate and harden, and especially to
furnish something toward what the States most need of all, and which
seems to me yet quite unsupplied in literature, namely, to show them, or
begin to show them, themselves distinctively, and what they are for.
For though perhaps the main points of all ages and nations are points of
resemblance, and, even while granting evolution, are substantially the
same, there are some vital things in which this Republic, as to its
individualities, and as a compacted Nation, is to specially stand forth,
and culminate modern humanity. And these are the very things it least
morally and mentally knows--(though, curiously enough, it is at the same
time faithfully acting upon them.)
I count with such absolute certainty on the great future of the United
States--different from, though founded on, the past--that I have always
invoked that future, and surrounded myself with it, before or while
singing my songs. (As ever, all tends to followings--America, too, is a
prophecy. What, even of the best and most successful, would be justified
by itself alone? by the present, or the material ostent alone? Of men or
States, few realize how much they live in the future. That, rising
like pinnacles, gives its main significance to all You and I are doing
to-day. Without it, there were little meaning in lands or poems--little
purport in human lives. All ages, all Nations and States, have been such
prophecies. But where any former ones with prophecy so broad, so clear,
as our times, our lands--as those of the West?)
Without being a scientist, I have thoroughly adopted the conclusions
of the great savants and experimentalists of our time, and of the last
hundred years, and they have interiorly tinged the chyle of all my
verse, for purposes beyond. Following the modern spirit, the real poems
of the present, ever solidifying and expanding into the future, must
vocalize the vastness and splendor and reality with which scientism has
invested man and the universe, (all that is called creation) and
must henceforth launch humanity into new orbits, consonant, with that
vastness, splendor, and reality, (unknown to the old poems,) like new
systems of orbs, balanced upon themselves, revolving in limitless space,
more subtle than the stars. Poetry, so largely hitherto and even at
present wedded to children's tales, and to mere amorousness, upholstery
and superficial rhyme, will have to accept, and, while not denying the
past, nor the themes of the past, will be revivified by this tremendous
innovation, the kosmic spirit, which must henceforth, in my opinion,
be the background and underlying impetus, more or less visible, of all
first-class songs.
Only, (for me, at any rate, in all my prose and poetry,) joyfully
accepting modern science, and loyally following it without the slightest
hesitation, there remains ever recognized still a higher flight, a
higher fact, the eternal soul of man, (of all else too,) the spiritual,
the religious--which it is to be the greatest office of scientism, in my
opinion, and of future poetry also, to free from fables, crudities and
superstitions, and launch forth in renew'd faith and scope a hundred
fold. To me, the worlds of religiousness, of the conception of the
divine, and of the ideal, though mainly latent, are just as absolute in
humanity and the universe as the world of chemistry, or anything in the
objective worlds. To me
The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves--in higher circles yet,
Shall mediate to the modern, to democracy--interpret yet to them,
God and eidólons.
To me, the crown of savantism is to be, that it surely opens the way for
a more splendid theology, and for ampler and diviner songs. No year, nor
even century, will settle this. There is a phase of the real, lurking
behind the real, which it is all for. There is also in the intellect of
man, in time, far in prospective recesses, a judgment, a last appellate
court, which will settle it.
In certain parts in these flights, or attempting to depict or suggest
them, I have not been afraid of the charge of obscurity, in either of
my two volumes-because human thought, poetry or melody, must leave dim
escapes and outlets-must possess a certain fluid, aerial character,
akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or no imagination,--but
indispensable to the highest purposes. Poetic style, when address'd to
the soul, is less definite form, outline, sculpture, and becomes vista,
music, half-tints, and even less than half-tints. True, it may be
architecture; but again it may be the forest wild-wood, or the best
effect thereof, at twilight, the waving oaks and cedars in the wind, and
the impalpable odor.
Finally, as I have lived in fresh lands, inchoate, and in a
revolutionary age, future-founding, I have felt to identify the points
of that age, these lands, in my recitatives, altogether in my own way.
Thus my form has strictly grown from my purports and facts, and is the
analogy of them. Within my time the United States have emerged from
nebulous vagueness and suspense, to full orbic, (though varied,)
decision--have done the deeds and achiev'd the triumphs of half a score
of centuries--and are henceforth to enter upon their real history the
way being now, (_i.e._ since the result of the secession war,) clear'd
of death-threatening impedimenta, and the free areas around and ahead
of us assured and certain, which were not so before--(the past century
being but preparations, trial voyages and experiments of the ship,
before her starting out upon deep water.)
In estimating my volumes, the world's current times and deeds, and their
spirit, must be first profoundly estimated. Out of the hundred years
just ending, (1776-1876,) with their genesis of inevitable wilful
events, and new experiments and introductions, and many unprecedented
things of war and peace, (to be realized better, perhaps only realized,
at the remove of a century hence;) out of that stretch of time,
and especially out of the immediately preceding twenty-five years,
(1850-'75,) with all their rapid changes, innovations, and audacious
movements-and bearing their own inevitable wilful birth-marks--the
experiments of my poems too have found genesis.