Walt Whitman is the poet of Individuality -the defender of the rights of each for the sake of all-and his sympathies are as wide as the world. He is the defender of the whole race.

VI.

HUMANITY.

The great poet is intensely human-infinitely sympathetic-entering into the joys and griefs of others, bearing their burdens, knowing their sorrows. Brain without heart is not much; they must act together. When the respectable people of the North, the rich, the successful, were willing to carry out the Fugitive Slave law, Walt Whitman said:

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,

Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,

I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with

the ooze of my skin,

I fall on the weeds and stones,

The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head

with whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and

keep watch,

It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd

to him and walk by his side.

Judge not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling upon a helpless thing.

Of the very worst he had the infinite tenderness to say: "Not until the sun excludes you will I exclude you."

In this age of greed when houses and lands, and stocks and bonds, outrank human life; when gold is more of value than blood, these words should be read by all:

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that

carved the supporting desk,

When I can touch the body of books by night or day, and

when they touch my body back again,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my

friendly companions,

I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them

as I do of men and women like you.

VII.

The poet is also a painter, a sculptor-he, too, deals in form and color. The great poet is of necessity a great artist. With a few words he creates pictures, filling his canvas with living men and women-with those who feel and speak. Have you ever read the account of the stage-driver's funeral? Let me read it:

Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in the streets,

A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of December,

A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stagedriver, the cortege mostly drivers.

Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, The gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses,