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CHAPTER X

PERIOD OF THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY,

1850-1880

VERSE (Continued)

He

Whitman, born in New

York, 1819;

died in New

Jersey, 1892.

ONE of the most interesting figures in our Litera- Walt ture is that of Walt Whitman. He was a printer by trade, taught school, and worked at the trade of carpenter. He acted as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals during the war of 1861-1865, and held a government clerkship in Washington till 1874. The last years of his life he lived in retirement in Camden, New Jersey. He had extreme theories as to poetry, and tried to carry them out in his own work. believed that everything connected with human life is essentially pure, and therefore fit subject for poetical treatment. An attempt to carry out this theory with absolute literalness might be expected to lead to some startling results, and it does in the case of Whitman's poetry. No one who has studied his work or his character can think that he has any impure or immoral intention. But the effect in general literature of some of his writings is very much the same as that which would be produced by a crazy man appearing on the street without his clothes. No one would receive moral injury, but the police would cover him up and insist on his retiring. Another

theory of Whitman's is an extreme development of Wordsworth's dictum that there is no real distinction between poetic and prose diction. In some of his compositions Whitman seems to abandon any distinction of form except the arrangement of words in lines of varying length. In many of them, however, there is a majestic rhythm, like that of some of the passages of the Psalms and Prophets in the English Bible. Sometimes he piles up names in shapeless mounds of speech; or strings them together in long lists of things connected with the subject of which he is writing. But in many passages he has voiced the music and the poetry in our everyday modern life; and he sometimes uses the forms of metre and rhythm and rime with very grand and beautiful effect, making us wish he had not been quite so much a slave to his own theories.

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He has been extravagantly praised and as extravagantly condemned. In England especially, his writings have been welcomed as the most characteristic American work that has ever appeared. son spoke of them in the highest terms; and there has always been a little company of Whitman worshippers. On the other hand, certain very few — passages in his books, the results of his extreme theories, are as impossible to read in general company as some passages of Chaucer, and led to the prohibition of the sale of his works in Massachusetts. There can be no doubt that some of Whitman's writings will last as long as anything in our Literature; and some thoughtful critics will always consider

these as among the great productions of the human mind. But it seems probable, also, that the crudities of form and grossness of expression which mar them will prevent their ever gaining general accep

tance.

"Leaves of Grass" is the most complete example of his peculiarities. It was issued in constantly changing form, in a number of editions, from 1855 to 1883. "Drum Taps," 1865; "Democratic Vistas," 1870; "Memoranda during the War," 1875; "November Boughs," 1888; and " Autobiographia," 1892, are among his most important publications. A selection of his writings has been edited by Mr. Arthur Stedman, which is probably the most easily accessible means of getting at what is best in Whitman. The following brief selections are to some extent representative of his work.

First, as a very moderate example of his more prosaic manner, read these lines from

O VAST RONDURE

After the seas are all crossed (as they seem already crossed), After the great captains and engineers have accomplished their

work,

After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,

Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

Imagine the line about the inventors and scientists spun out in the same way to a length of three or four ordinary lines, and you will have Whitman in his

most exasperating form. As an example of his best work, read

1

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR BIRD
Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee),
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,

As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point, on the world's floating vast).

Far, far at sea,

After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,

With reappearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also reappearest.

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings),

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms,

gyrating,

At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,

That sport'st amid the lightning flash and thunder cloud,
In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul,

What joys! what joys were thine!

Notice the boldness and originality of the phrases "slept all night upon the storm," "the sky, thy slave that cradled thee," "the night's fierce drifts," "the rosy and elastic dawn," "Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails." Any one of these would give character to a much longer poem by other writers. There is a grand rhythm in this, like the sweep of

1 These selections from Whitman are from "Leaves of Grass," Small, Maynard & Co., Publishers, by permission of the literary execu

tors.

the bird's wings. And the thought with which the poem closes is sublime, and grandly spoken. If Whitman had always written like this, there would have been no question with any one as to his greatness. That he could pull in harness if he would is proved by some beautiful poems, in which the metre is perfect, though he refuses even in these to be hampered by rime. Many pieces of verse of many grades of excellence were suggested by the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln; but, by general consent, the first place among them will be given, if not to the passage quoted from Lowell's "Commemoration Ode," then to Whitman's "Captain, my Captain." While Lowell gave supreme utterance to the nation's judgment as to Lincoln's character, Whitman expressed, as did no other poet, the despairing grief of the moment of his death. Hence it must be said that as lyric poetry Whitman's is the finer work.

CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise

up- - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills,— For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,

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