and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew. And the worm spake to the angel saying: "Behold my food." “βῆ δ ̓ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης, murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, "and can you destroy that too?" And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head. Lord Dunsany (1878-) Walt Whitman is preeminently the poet of American democracy. While Longfellow and Holmes were wooing the courtly muses of Europe, Whitman turned his back upon the traditional subject matter, metrical forms, and language of poetry in an endeavor to translate into poetry American life and American ideals. There is little that is distinctively national about the work of Poe and the New England poets, excellent as their poems often are. "Too many of your American writers are echoes," says the Hindu poet Tagore; "but Whitman is a voice." Before America could be adequately put into poetry, so it seemed to Whitman, poetry itself had to be democratized. Rime and meter had to go. The "divine average," not Shakespeare's kings, Tennyson's knights, or Homer's chieftains, were to supply the heroes of American poetry. Poems were to be written, not for a few cultured aristocrats, but for the whole people. The strangest fact about Whitman's work is that though it was intended for the masses, the average man in the street has remained wholly indifferent to it. In Whitman's time the prevailing American notion of poetry was represented not by Leaves of Grass but by "The Village Blacksmith" and Evangeline. During his lifetime Whitman's chief admirers were cultured Englishmen. Curiously enough, it was Whitman's vogue abroad, which is still enormous and increasing, that forced Americans to recognize him. Although Emerson and Thoreau both hailed him as a genuine poet, it is to Englishmen like Rossetti and Swinburne that we go for characteristic praise. The finest tribute ever paid to Whitman is Swinburne's "To Walt Whitman in America," from which we quote the following stanzas: Send but a song oversea for us, Heart of their hearts who are free, Ours in the tempest at error, Make us, too, music, to be with us As a word from a world's heart warm, To sail the dark as a sea with us, A Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, Whose burning shall burn up tears, Since Whitman's verse is singularly uneven, it is best for the beginner to read him first in selected poems. When trying to illustrate his theory that all things are poetical, Whitman often wrote wretched stuff which sounds like a telephone directory or Who's Who in America; but when he wrote spontaneously of what he knew and felt, he produced great and original poetry. His later poems are much less uneven in merit than his earlier verse. Whitman's poetry was not meant for those who wish merely to while away an idle hour. He might have said of his poems, as Browning said of his, that he never meant them to take the place of an after-dinner cigar. TO A CERTAIN CIVILIAN Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me? Did you seek the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes? Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow, Why, I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand-nor am I now (I have been born of the same as the war was born, The drum-corps' rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the martial dirge, With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer's funeral); What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works, And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes, For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) There are those who maintain that Whitman's compositions are not finished poems but merely the raw material untranslated into poetry. Of some of his poems and of parts of others, this is undeniably true. In the following poem the opening lines seem prosaic, but they prepare us for the conclusion, which is genuine poetry. One who looks at the stars from the point of view of the mathematician will see very little poetry in them, for science and poetry hold opposite attitudes toward the facts of life. The poetic attitude is found in the Nineteenth Psalm or in the poem which we quote from Whitman. WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Walt Whitman (1819-1892) The Civil War marks the great crisis in Whitman's life. Though it tried his faith in American democracy as nothing else ever did, he came out with his faith confirmed. His Drum-Taps is the best volume of poems inspired by the War. His war poems describe not the great battles but minor incidents which bring out the human qualities of the participants in that tremendous conflict. What more could any soldier say of a faithful comrade-in-arms than Whitman says of an unknown soldier killed in Virginia? AS TOILSOME I WANDER'D VIRGINIA'S WOODS As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods, To the music of rustling leaves kick'd by my feet (for 't was autumn), I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier; Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat (easily all could I understand), The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose yet this sign left, On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave, Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering, Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life, Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street, Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription rude in Virginia's woods, Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. Walt Whitman (1819-1898) At his best Whitman does not suffer from comparison with poets who use only the regular metrical forms. With other poems expressing a poet's attitude toward deathTennyson's "Crossing the Bar," Browning's "Prospice," and Sara Teasdale's "The Lamp"-one should compare Whitman's "Darest Thou Now, O Soul" and other poems in free verse to be quoted later in the chapter. In earlier years Whitman had written: Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. |