TRONG poet of the sleepless gods that dwell
As far above the stars as we beneath,

Thy melody, disdaining the soft sheath
Of dainty modern music, snaps the spell,
And heedless of old forms and fettered plan,
Clothes itself carelessly in rough free words,
And strikes with giant's hand the inner chords
That vibrate in the strong and healthful man!

What if our brothers in an age to be,

Emerging from the Titan war of Thought,

Seize hollow Custom, and with one keen blow Strike off her seven heads, and having smote, Pass on, and with their larger veins aglow With new-found vigour, mould themselves to thee!

A. A.

H

AVE we not hailed them great who fought for the truth when it was not,

Strong in the rapture of hope, knowing by faith it should be, Barriers down, ways clear; and shall we not hail you, brother, True to the high faith of freedom, 'midst of the shame of the free— After the truth's own treason, hoping against hope's confusion, teaching the weary of light and the hope-sick to see.

Laurels we gave them freely, who, when their kindred reviled them,
Fronted the scorn of the world with a scorn overwhelming its own :
Shall we not laurel the leader, who, when his brothers denied him,
Loving them never the less, stayed him not ev'n to condone;
Glad of their virtue still, triumphing not in their vileness, triumphing
only to think they should walk in the way he had shown!

Better forgiveness serene as the sun than the bolt of the storm-god :
Better the large faith of love than the Coriolanian cry:

Better the eye still bright with the dream of a glorious distance

Than the sad grey world of the sage scanning his race from on high; Better the pride of the comrade, great in his vision of greatness, than the pride of the sage or the scorner, letting his kind pass by.

WALT WHITMAN.

N ancient and authoritative saw has formulated for us a peculiar social tendency which, though presumably recognised for eighteen hundred years back, has not, even in this era of explanation and theory, been systematically accounted for. It is exemplified in the common disposition to-day in England to see the greatest living American author in one whom the literary world of the States continues to treat somewhat as an outer barbarian. American writers have not yet ceased to speak with a halfindignant, half-scornful astonishment of the singular appreciation British readers and critics accord to products of American literature which are thought little of in the land of their birth. And yet the law of the ratio of a prophet's popularity has been illustrated parallel-wise in the States, the reading public there frequently taking a British writer into favour long before he has won acceptance at home. Reversing the phrase of Hamlet, one might suggest that there is something natural in this, if philosophy could but find it out. That Carlyle should have found a wide hearing in America earlier than in England, might perhaps be explained plausibly by crediting the people of the young Republic with the more ready ear for unconven

A

tional speech; but how on that theory account for the tabooing of Whitman in the States in the teeth of the tribute of that Emerson who had stood sponsor for Carlyle? Perhaps 'twere to consider too curiously for literary edification to consider so. To know why Whitman has been so much more kindly received in England than in the States would probably be to have a true perception of his value and importance, his strength and his weakness; but to attain such an explanation seems much more difficult than to weigh his message and his method on their merits. To know why we have ourselves received him, however, is a step towards a solution; and it is meet that so much should be ascertained.

It is a natural as well as a precedented course to begin by asking what we went out to see when we met the stranger; but how shall it be told? At the outset we are met by the sharp American demand to know why we should expect a peculiar literary product from a section of our own race which speaks our speech, and reads our classics, in a climate not greatly different from our own. The position is delicate. Are we to premise that our kin beyond seas are further-seeing than we; or to hint the crude doctrine that we look for large ideas from the dwellers in a large land, novel thoughts from those who breathe the air of the New World? Crude or clumsy if the process of reasoning be, there the fact stands that English readers had long been demanding from the United States a new and autochthonic poetical product; and it can hardly be but that the demand arose from a sense of distinction and high birthright attaching to the young nation whose gianthood was so early surmised. Surely the attitude of expectation had its touching side, though we may not