high above every other man that ever wrote. It is easy for the essayist
to speak in general terms and glittering phrases in defense of Whitman’s
work. His defenders have been many, but he alone has had the courage to
speak.
It is not difficult to insist that his “A Woman Waits for Me” is a
tremendous work, and as pure as nature’s generating power. Still perhaps
few would dare to read it aloud in an assembly of men and women. If
Whitman is right, the world is wrong. This poem, and others of its like,
in plain words deals of the deepest, strongest, most persistent feelings
that move the sentient world. In proportion as they are deeper and
stronger than any other, they should the more be the subject of thought
and art. And still ages of established convention have made the world
pretend ignorance until no one dares defend his right to life but this
brave and simple man.
In both England and America, narrow interpretations of morality have
almost stifled art. As remarked by a leading novelist—“All our
literature is addressed to the young school girl.” If it will not pass
muster before her eyes, it has no right to live, and almost no English
or American author has been great enough to rise above these narrow
conventions and write the natural and true. The artists of continental
Europe have been less fettered and have taken us over a broader range
and a wider field. Still while these authors have told more of life,
they have treated these tremendous subjects by drawing the curtain only
a little way aside, and giving us a curious, perverted, half stolen
look, as if they knew that the picture was unholy and therefore tempting
to the gaze. But Walt Whitman approached the human body and the
mysteries of life from an entirely different view.
If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
than the most beautiful face.
If Walt Whitman could have drawn the veil from the universe and shown us
the living God in all his majesty and power, he would have approached
his throne with no greater reverence than when he stripped the human
body and pointed to its every part fresh and sacred from its Maker’s
hand.
No true system of life and morals will exist until the holiest feelings
and most potent and eternal power is openly recognized and discussed
with neither jest nor shame.
Walt Whitman was the great bard of democracy and equality; not simply
the vulgar democracy of political rights and promiscuous familiarity,
but the deep, broad, fundamental democracy that looks at all of nature
and feels the unity and kinship that makes the universe a whole.
To Walt Whitman there could be no thought of class or caste. Each one
held his certificate of birth from the same infinite power that, through
all the ages and all the false and criminal distinctions of man, has yet
decreed that all shall enter helpless and naked through the same gateway
of birth, and each alike must go back to the fundamental mother, shorn
of every distinction that man in his vain-glorious pride has sought to
make. Whitman placed the works of nature above the works of man. He had
no faith in those laws and institutions which the world has ever made to
defraud, and enslave, and deny the common brotherhood of all. He
believed that every child that came upon the earth was legitimate, and
had an equal right to land, and sea, and air, and all that nature made,
and all that nature gave.
Each of us is inevitable,
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
Let this stanza speak to our conscience face to face—is it true or
false? Can any but a blasphemer deny the divine right of every man upon
the earth? And yet if this simple stanza is true, every law book should
be burned and every court abolished and natural justice, unfettered and
undenied, should be enthroned above the forms and conventions and laws,
which, each and all, deny the integrity of the soul and the equal rights
of man.
Through all the injustice and inequality of the world, the vision of
democracy has still prevailed and ever must prevail as long as nature
brings forth and takes back the master and the slave alike. But the
aspiration for democracy is not always high and noble. It is easy to
demand for ourselves the same rights enjoyed by our fellow men, but
Whitman’s democracy was on a higher plane.
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracys
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of
on the same terms.
These lines breathe the spirit of true humanity, the spirit that will
one day remove all barriers and restrictions, and liberate the high and
low alike. For nothing is truer in life or more inevitable in the
economy of nature than this sage thought:
Whatever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
It is a sad mistake to believe that injustice and wrong can injure only
the poor and the weak. Every mean word and narrow thought and selfish
act degrades the aggressor, leaves its mark upon his soul and its
penalty in his life. So, too, no good effort is really lost, however it
may seem to be. The kind word may be spoken to the deaf, the righteous
effort be wrongly directed, the alms unworthily bestowed, but the heart
that feels and the soul that tries has grown greater by the act.
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him,—it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress,
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the
indication of his own.
Not alone in his theory of personal equality was Walt Whitman a democrat
in the highest meaning of the term, but he distrusted the ease and
effeminacy of modern life; he doubted and feared the polish and
super-sensitiveness that precedes decay; he had no faith in hot-house
plants, in pampered life, in luxury and repose. He believed in rugged,
primeval nature, in the rocks and hills, the rivers and the pines; he
loved the dumb and patient brute, and believed in stalwart men and
strong women; in sunlight, rain and air.
I am enamour’d of growing out of doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and
mauls, and the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them and long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning
things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years
ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Walt Whitman’s work is not of the old, time-worn sort. When he speaks of
love it is the love of life, the love of reality, the strong love of
men, the intense love of women, the honest love that nature made, the
love that is; not the unhealthy, immoral, false, impossible love told in
erotic prose and more erotic verse, and given to young girls and boys as
the truth, to poison and corrupt with its false and vicious views of
life.
But he sings of the common things, the democracy of every day; for it is
the small affairs that make up life, and its true philosophy is to see
the beauty and greatness and relation of these little things and not to
pine for the seemingly momentous events, which can rarely come. The
Alexanders, the Cæsars and the Napoleons are scattered only here and
there in the great sea of human existence, and yet every life measured
by just standards may be as great as these; and the soul that is
conscious of its own integrity knows its own worth regardless of the
world.
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
Walt Whitman felt the music of the hammer and the axe as he felt the
harmony of the symphonies of Beethoven, and he understood the art of the
plough-boy in the field as well as the glorious creations of Millet.
The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him
all day,
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and
love them.
The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine,
On the night ere the pending battle may seek me, and I do not fail them,
On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me,
My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his
blanket,
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they
are,
They and all would resume what I have told them.
Walt Whitman’s democracy did not end with sex. Man is not always a
logical animal. Most of the practical democracy of the world has stopped
with men, and generally with white men at that. The political equality
of woman has only barely been considered; the still more important
question, her economic independence, is yet a far-off dream. But Walt
Whitman knew no limit to equality. With him equality meant equality. It
could mean nothing else.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
Probably Walt Whitman would not have raised his hat to a woman on the
street, nor given her his seat in the car, simply because she was a
woman. Both these may be well enough, but they grow from false ideas of
women and of course through these false ideas women lose the most.
Injustice and oppression can never be made up by chivalry and pretended
courtesy. And the evil always is and must be the false relation which
these create. Men expect to pay women for their political and economic
freedom in theater tickets and by taking off their hats in public, and
in the end women become willing to receive this paltry and debasing
bribe.
“The Open Road,” one of Whitman’s masterpieces, is full of wholesome
inclusive democracy.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Here the profound lessons of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate
person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the
drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping
couple,
The early market men, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town,
the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
But Walt Whitman’s democracy was more inclusive still. It is almost
becoming the fad to forgive the evil in others and to insist that, after
all, their good qualities give them the right to kinship with ourselves,
but this is only one side of true democracy. The felon is my brother,
not alone because he has every element of good that I so well recognize
in myself, but because I have every element of evil that I see in him.
Walt Whitman was wise enough to see the feelings and passions that make
others sin, and he was just enough and great enough to recognize all
these feelings in himself.
You felons on trial in courts,
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and
handcuff’d with iron,
Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with
iron, or my ankles with iron?
You prostitutes flaunting over the pavements or obscene in your rooms,
Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?
O culpable! I acknowledge—I expose!
(O admirers, praise not me—compliment not me—you make me wince,
I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)
Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,
Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually
run,
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
I walk with delinquents with passionate love,
I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?
These lines are not a burst of poetic feeling, they are the sincere
utterances of a brave philosopher and poet, who tells the truth about
himself and about you and me. Let us be honest about sin. How do you and
I differ from the murderer on the gallows, the prostitute in the street
or the burglar in the jail? How wide a breach is there between coveting
the house or home or seal skin coat of your neighbor and taking it if
you can? How great a difference between making a sharp trade with your
neighbor, getting more from him than you give to him, and taking
outright what he has? Yet one is business, the other larceny. What is
the distance between hating your neighbor, and wishing him dead: how
great a chasm between feeling relief at his death, and killing him
yourself? So far as the man is concerned, it is not the act that is
evil, but the heart that is evil. There is no difference between the
committed and the uncommitted crime. Every feeling that makes every sort
of crime is in the heart of each and every one. Nature has made the
blood of some of us a little cooler, and has developed caution a little
more, or fate has made the temptation a trifle less, and thus we have
escaped,—that is, managed to conceal the real passion that boils and
surges in our hearts. Until this is dead, evil is in our souls. Away
with all this talk of superiority and differences. It is cant—pure,
simple cant.
I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my
companions?
O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,
I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest.
Has man the right to be less kind than nature is? Have we the right by
word or deed to pass judgment on our fellow man? Can we not learn of
love and charity and hope from the sun, the rain, the generous earth,
and the pulsing, growing spring? Hear Walt Whitman’s word to a common
prostitute:
Be composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as
Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle
for you do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
Neither was it the magnanimous soul of Whitman that was charitable and
kind, but it was the truthful, honest man who saw his own goodness in
the woman; and her sin, which after all was only an excess of kindness,
in himself.
The regenerated world will be built upon the democracy Walt Whitman
taught. It will know neither rich nor poor; neither high nor low;
neither good nor bad; neither right nor wrong; but
I will establish *** in every city of these states inland and seaboard,
In the fields and woods, and above every keel, little or large, that
dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.
Walt Whitman was always and at all times an optimist. He never struck a
despairing note or voiced a doubting strain. His hope was not anchored
in blind faith or narrow creed. His optimism was not that of the
cowardly fanatic who stubbornly shuts his eyes to avoid an unpleasant
view. He looked abroad at all the world and called it good.
Optimism and pessimism in their last analysis are questions of
temperament. They depend upon the eye that looks out, not upon the
object that it sees. The pessimist points to the sunset, casting its
lengthening shadows on the earth, and tells of the night that is coming
on; the optimist shows us the rosy dawn, the golden promise of a
glorious day. The pessimist tells of winter, whose icy breath chills and
deadens all the world; the optimist points to springtime with its ever
recurring miracle of light and life. Is the pessimist right or is the
optimist right—does the night precede the day, or the day precede the
night? After all, are our calendars wrong—does the winter with its white
shroud and cold face mark the ending of the year, or does the springtime
with its budding life and its resurrecting power awaken the dead earth
to joyous, pulsing life again?
Above the view of the optimist, who sees the morning and the spring, and
the pessimist, who sees the evening and the closing year, stand a few
serene souls, who look on both with clear eye and tranquil mind, and
declare that all is good. The morning is right and the evening is right.
It is beautiful to pass through the joyous gates of birth; it is good to
be clasped in the peaceful arms of death. Rare Walt Whitman at
thirty-seven, full of health and vigor and strength, with the world
before him, and conscious of his genius and his power, sings in a burst
of optimism:
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the
same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Again at seventy, looking back on a life well spent, conscious that the
last few sands are running out, a confirmed invalid with palsied limbs
and failing strength, looking death squarely in the face and just before
him; with the same sweet smile, the same lovely nature, the same
all-embracing philosophy, sings once again his optimistic song:
Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier
air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs really
finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming, quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding, blissful halcyon days!
It must be that somewhere is a serene height where life triumphs over
death. It must be that nature does not jar, and that the close of a
lovely life is really as peaceful and as beautiful as the decline of a
perfect day; that each day rightly lived and every year well spent, must
bring the pilgrim more in harmony with his journey drawing to a close.
The world has ever shuddered at death—has stubbornly closed its eyes and
refused to look at the great fact that nature places all about our path;
has never tried to look in its face, to take its hand, to think of its
peaceful, forgiving, soothing touch; has ever called it enemy and never
thought to caress it as a friend. Walt Whitman was wiser than the rest.
His philosophy made him know that death was equally good, whether the
opening gateway to a freer, fuller life, or a restful couch for a weary
soul.
Whitman had solved the eternal riddle; he had conquered death; he looked
at her pale form and saluted her as he would welcome a new birth. No
bard ever sang a more glorious hymn than Walt Whitman sang to death.
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death,
Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise
For the sure enwinding arms of cool, enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly,
Approach, strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them
I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for
thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are
fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night,
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well veil’d Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee,
Over the tree tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
prairies wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death.
Whitman in his wheel chair, physically shattered and broken, but with a
mind strong and serene, and at peace with all the world, waiting for the
sun to set, is a lesson in optimism better than all the sermons ever
preached. Without faith in any form of religion that the world has ever
known, he had brought his life so in harmony with nature that he felt
every beat of the great, universal heart, and with the confidence of
certain knowledge he looked upon the fading earth and caroled a song as
he sailed forth on that great unknown sea, which is hidden in perpetual
night, from all but the few great souls, whose wisdom and insight have
given them the confidence and trust of a little child.
Joy, shipmates, joy!
(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmates, joy.
Conscious of the integrity of his purpose, and the inherent
righteousness of his life, moved and upheld by his broad philosophy and
his patient, trustful soul, with no false modesty and with the same
manly egoism that made him what he was—the kindest, gentlest, justest,
broadest, manliest man—Walt Whitman asked the reward his life had
earned.
Give me the pay I have served for,
Give me to sing the song of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given alms to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid and
crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence
toward people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young, and
with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, stars,
rivers,
Dismiss’d whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for others
on the same terms,
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State,
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean’d to breathe his last,
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish’d, rais’d, restor’d,
To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of
myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.