Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v27 - Wat to Zor
15891 (#227) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15891
the poet and not that of the essayist or philosopher. He is not the
least bit didactic; he never explains or apologizes. The reader must
take him on the wing, or not at all. He does not state his argu-
ment so much as he speaks out of it and effuses its atmosphere.
Then he is avowedly the poet of vista: to open doors and win-
dows, to let down bars rather than to put them up, to dissolve forms,
to escape boundaries, to plant the reader on a hill rather than in a
corner, — this fact is the explanation of the general character of his
work in respect to form.
Readers who have a keen sense of what is called artistic form in
poetry, meaning the sense of the deftly carved or shaped, are apt to
be repelled by the absence of all verse architecture in the poems.
A hostile critic might say they are not builded up, but heaped up.
But this would give a wrong impression, inasmuch as a piece of true
literature bears no necessary analogy to a house or the work of the
cabinet-maker. It may find its type or suggestion in a tree, a river,
or in any growing or expanding thing. Verse perfectly fluid, and
without any palpable, resisting extrinsic form whatever, or anything to
take his readers' attention away from himself and the content of his
page, was Whitman's aim.
Opinion will doubtless long be divided about the value of his
work. He said he was willing to wait to be understood by the
growth of the taste of himself. That this taste is growing, that the
new generations are coming more and more into his spirit and atmo-
sphere, that the mountain is less and less forbidding, and looms up
more and more as we get farther from it, is obvious enough. That
he will ever be in any sense a popular poet is in the highest degree
improbable: but that he will kindle enthusiasm in successive minds;
that he will be an enormous feeder to the coming poetic genius of
his country; that he will enlarge criticism, and make it easy for every
succeeding poet to be himself and to be American; and finally that
he will take his place among the few major poets of the race, I have
not the least doubt.
Josu
Aurroughs
## p. 15892 (#228) ##########################################
15892
WALT WHITMAN
[The following selections are used by permission of the legal representatives
of the estate of Walt Whitman. ]
I HEARD YOU SOLEMN-SWEET PIPES OF THE ORGAN
I
HEARD you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn
I passed the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walked the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretched sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of
the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last
night under my ear.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I
Foot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
AF
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.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return. )
2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
## p. 15893 (#229) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15893
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, 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 marketman, 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.
3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them
shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to
me.
You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges !
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you tirnber-lined
sides! you distant ships !
You rows of houses! you window-pierced façades! you roofs !
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touched you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to
me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive sur-
faces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and ami-
cable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the
road.
## p. 15894 (#230) ##########################################
15894
WALT WHITMAN
O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not — if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love
you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and all free
poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.
5
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say, .
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
[mine.
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to
me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I
go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze
me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appeared it would not
astonish me.
## p. 15895 (#231) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15895
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room.
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it. )
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under
the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing
currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love if they are vacant of you, you
are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashioned, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers ?
Do you know the talk of those turning eyeballs ?
7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embowered gates
ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why
are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the
sunlight expands my blood ?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
## p. 15896 (#232) ##########################################
15896
WALT WHITMAN
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and
always drop fruit as I pass :)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers ?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side ?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk
by and pause ?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what
gives me to be free to mine ?
8
The efflux of the Soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The Auid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of
man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day
out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and
sweet continually out of itself. )
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
love of young and old,
From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude
and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well enveloped,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However sheltered this port and however calm these waters we must
not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted
to receive it but a little while.
## p. 15897 (#233) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15897
IO
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage
the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determined bodies,
No diseased person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted
here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence. )
II
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough 'new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destined, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
toward you.
I 2
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road — they are the swift and majestic men-
they are the greatest women,
## p. 15898 (#234) ##########################################
15898
WALT WHITMAN
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of child-
ren, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded
and well-grained manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpassed, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or woman-
hood.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the
universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it
and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, how-
ever long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
låbor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstract-
ing one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple,
and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you
go,
## p. 15899 (#235) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15899
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments
- all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls, along the
grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dis-
satisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they
go,
But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed
faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and worldless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bed-
room, everywhere,
## p. 15900 (#236) ##########################################
15900
WALT WHITMAN
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
14
Allons! through struggles and wars !
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded ?
What has succeeded ? yourself? your nation ? Nature ?
Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things
that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater struggle neces-
sary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well armed,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry en-
emies, desertions.
15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well — be not
detained!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
shelf unopened!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain un-
earned!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live ?
## p. 15901 (#237) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15901
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
T"
"He last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the housetops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father drop together,
And the double grave awaits them. )
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined.
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing. )
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
## p. 15902 (#238) ##########################################
15902
WALT WHITMAN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOMED
I
HEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the
night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
WF
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -0 moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared -0 the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless - O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!
-
3
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed
palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong
I love,
With every leaf a miracle; — and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song. -
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die).
## p. 15903 (#239) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15903
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped
from the ground, spotting the gray débris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the end-
less grass,
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women
standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting dépôt, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these
you journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,-
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
For, fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, o death. )
## p. 15904 (#240) ##########################################
15904
WALT WHITMAN
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked,
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side (while the
other stars all looked on),
As we wandered together the solemn night (for something. I know
not what, kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full
you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black
of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you;
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
IO
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has
gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
II
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?
## p. 15905 (#241) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15905
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid
and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chim-
neys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.
I 2
Lo, body and soul — this land,
My, own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading, bathing all, the fulfilled noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses; pour your chant from the
bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer!
You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
XXVII–995
## p. 15906 (#242) ##########################################
15906
WALT WHITMAN
14
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and
forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturbed winds and the
storms),
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its
meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent-
lo, then and there,
[rest,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands
of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dim-
ness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands iny comrades in the night,
And the voice of iny spirit tallied the song of the bird.
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.
## p. 15907 (#243) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15907
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 it 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,
Lazed 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 ware whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled 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.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night,
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I
saw them,
## p. 15908 (#244) ##########################################
15908
WALT WHITMAN
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
-
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them;
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought, -
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not:
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my
soul,
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding
the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing
with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep,
for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and this for
his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
## p. 15909 (#245) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15909
O 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,
Wnile 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-crowd-
ing;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has nor pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4th, 1865)
USHED be the camps to-day,
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate
Our dear commander's death.
H
No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat;- no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky,
## p. 15910 (#246) ##########################################
15910
WALT WHITMAN
But sing, poet, in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in camps,
know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing as they close the doors of earth upon him
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
one verse,
«DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL »
D
AREST thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O soul,
Nor dost thou; all is a blank before us;
All waits undreamed-of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all! ) them to fulfill, O soul.
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
A
NOISELESS patient spider
I marked, where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how, to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament; filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, () my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to con-
nect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you Aling catch somewhere, O my soul.
## p. 15910 (#247) ##########################################
## p. 15910 (#248) ##########################################
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## p. 15910 (#249) ##########################################
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## p. 15910 (#250) ##########################################
3
## p. 15911 (#251) ##########################################
15911
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
(1807-1892)
BY GEORGE R. CARPENTER
ull appreciation of Whittier's work depends to an unusual
degree on an understanding of his life and character. The
verse of his equally celebrated contemporary, Longfellow,
for example, needs little explanation; Longfellow's career was that of
the student, the traveler, the genial professor. His tastes, his sympa-
thies, his ambitions, were not widely separated from those of men of
letters throughout the world. With Whittier the case was entirely
different. He was born of simple farming folk; his formal education
was merely that of the district school and the country academy; the
experience of travel was denied him. He sprang from the soil of
New England, showing to the full the virtues and defects of his an-
cestry and environment; and his singular merit is that he represents,
with extraordinary success, the most winning side of country life in
his native district, - its faith, its theocratic conception of the State, its
indignation at injustice, its stalwart upholding of the dignity of labor,
its old content in simple joys and simple duties. Not only has Whit-
tier expressed in his verse emotions peculiar in many ways to
America, and common to a large body of Americans, but there is no
other one of our poets, of the body of whose work this could be said.
That he was able thus to hold fast to old ideals, and to depict with
sympathy native life and country ways, — that he did not desert his
homely subjects and homely style for the more European matter and
diction of his contemporaries, — was due to circumstances that iso-
lated him from city life and the foreign influences that are so plainly
revealed in their work.
John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17th, 1807, in Haver-
hill, Massachusetts, of a family that had been permanently settled
in that immediate vicinity since the early days of the seventeenth
century. Until he was nearly twenty, he had no educational advan-
tages besides those afforded by the ordinary district school. In 1827
and 1828, however, he attended the Haverhill Academy. For a year
he was in the employ of a Boston printing-house, where he edited a
Protectionist paper and a temperance journal. For another year he
was the editor of the New England Weekly Review in Hartford, in
## p. 15912 (#252) ##########################################
15912
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
which he succeeded George D. Prentice. In 1833 he signed the
National Anti-Slavery Declaration as one of the delegates from Mas-
sachusetts; in 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature;
in 1837 he was for a few months in New York as one of the secreta-
ries of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and from 1837 to 1840 he
was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, a Philadelphia abolitionist
journal. With the exception of the absences occasioned by these
duties, Whittier's long life was almost entirely spent in Essex County,
Massachusetts; either in Haverhill, Amesbury, or Danvers. He died in
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 8th, 1892. .
Thomas Whittier, the emigrant founder of the family, is said to
have been a Huguenot. His immense energy and unflinching devo-
tion to moral aims made him a typical Puritan: but he showed a
vein of unusual toleration in religious matters, by taking the side of
some persecuted members of the Society of Friends; and during his
lifetime his son married a Quaker. The wife's influence prevailed;
and henceforth, with few exceptions, the family followed her simple
and noble faith. Whittier's own father was an active, taciturn man,
the type of independent conservatism and of the virtuous and indus-
trious freeman on whom the commonwealth rests. His mother was an
equally fine type of the Quaker matron, whose religion found expres-
sion in an ideally beautiful character. His early life was that of the
ordinary country lad,— full of effort and discipline, free from affecta-
tion,-a circumscribed life, in which the outer world of cities is
unrealized, and the attention is rarely called beyond the limits of the
township and the county. The Whittiers were small farmers; and
their means and the Quaker creed alike discouraged special efforts
for worldly education. The boy performed, year in, year out, his
simple country tasks, acquiring the scant learning of the district
school, and retaining it with a firmness of grasp that was stimulated
by lack of wide opportunity. His native tongue he knew as only a
country boy of his time could know it, drawing deep from the homely
language of the people, which clung closer to the idioms of the great
centuries than did the diction of the lettered world,— a language
ennobled by the pioneer's close contact with life and nature, and
chastened by the constant influence of the Bible. He was early a
rhymester; and some lines sent to a local paper brought him to the
attention of a larger circle of friends and led to wider opportunities.
His facile, boyish verse dealt often with national history and public
interests, and his trend of mind led him to journalism and politics.
By 1832 he had won a name for himself in both fields, and seemed
likely to represent his district in Congress.
Two influences intervened to prevent Whittier's being drawn into
the vortex of the city and under the sway of its alien ideals, and
## p. 15913 (#253) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15913
attached him permanently to the rural life of his boyhood. His del-
icate health made impossible for him the activity and anxiety of a
journalist's career; and his spirit, which was that of the reformer,
bound him to what then seemed the lost cause of the abolition
movement. To support oneself in the field of letters was then
scarcely possible; especially for an abolitionist, who was by no means
a welcome contributor to any periodical which sought a wide and
tolerant circulation. Debarred, therefore, from the professional pur-
suit of letters, journalism, and politics, Whittier resigned himself to
the quiet life of the countryman. Until he was past middle age his
copyrights were valueless: but he was for many years a paid con-
tributor to the most important abolitionist journal, the Washington
National Era, in which Uncle Tom's Cabin' appeared as a serial;
his habits were frugal and his wants few. When the success of his
political ideals was assured, when his voice was recognized through-
out the North as that of the poet of freedom, and the popularity of
his verse had put him beyond the reach of want, he still lived in
the homely fashion of his ancestors, shunning the jostle and jar of
cities and crowded resorts. An honored friend of the great and the
learned, he consistently held himself aloof from all entanglements
that would disturb the Quaker simplicity and Puritan strenuousness
of his life, always in perfect sympathy with the old New England
ideals and traditions.
Whittier's spirit was that of the reformer. As a boy he wrote
that he would rather have “the memory of a Howard, a Wilberforce,
or a Clarkson, than the undying fame of a Byron. ” As editor for a
time of an antislavery journal, and by his pamphlets and poems, he
was one of the foremost in advancing the claims of his despised but
rapidly growing party. In practical politics his services were equally
strenuous and even more effective. He was the friend and adviser
of statesmen; he was, on occasion, a shrewd lobbyist in the Massa-
chusetts Legislature; and in his own district he was the recognized
head of a party that held the balance of power, and was accustomed
cannily to pledge the candidate whom it honored with its vote. But
whatever were his secret services in the direction of public affairs,
Whittier first won his reputation by a remarkable series of anti-
slavery poems, which arrested attention and molded public opinion.
Beyond any other American poet, he had the power of expressing,
in a striking way, the latent thought of plain people. His Kansas
Emigrants became actually the song of those who
crossed the prairie, as of old
The Pilgrims crossed the sea. )
“We wait beneath the furnace blast,” were the words of every noble
Northern heart during the years of the great trial; and other verses
## p. 15914 (#254) ##########################################
15914
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
of far inferior quality, now forgotten, were not without a strong influ-
ence on all ranks of society, from the President and his Cabinet to
the lowest soldier and taxpayer. The best of these political tracts
in verse had in them the genuine singing quality of Whittier's best
work. They were all efficacious; but they were militant in quality,
instruments in a transient struggle, the product of discord and sec-
tional feeling, and hence hardly destined to live in the national mem-
ory. One ballad alone of this sort, Barbara Frietchie,' is thoroughly
familiar to the younger generation, and will long survive as a tribute
to Northern bravery and Southern chivalry.
Whittier's religious verse is much more national in character.
Here the progress of the century has worked as plainly for the per-
manence of his fame as it has worked against that of his political
verse. His political verse tended to perpetuate differences of opinion
that were soon settled forever. His religious verse, on the other
hand, steadily prefigured a unity of feeling to which gentle souls of
all creeds aspire. For many decades all the Protestant sects in
America have been moving slowly toward the Quaker standpoint, —
tending to acknowledge that always, by the mouths of prophets,
poets, priests, and philosophers, God hath revealed himself; and that
the living spirit of God, acting upon the hearts of men, is the great
guide in matters of conduct and belief. Whittier's Quaker tolerance,
his life of moral earnestness, his leisure for meditation, his own gen-
tle, unspotted character, and his simple way of taking the world, -
all these made him a fitting spokesman in verse of the most lib-
eral religious feeling of his day. The main motives of his creed are
always the “eternal goodness of God, and faith in immortality,–
truths so deeply rooted historically in the conceptions of our race
that denial of them has the air of painful novelty, as of some new
city notion that troubles but for an instant the abiding peace of the
ancestral and rural faith.
It is, however, by his verses on country life, rather than by his
political or religious poetry, that Whittier will be remembered.
WALT WHITMAN
15891
the poet and not that of the essayist or philosopher. He is not the
least bit didactic; he never explains or apologizes. The reader must
take him on the wing, or not at all. He does not state his argu-
ment so much as he speaks out of it and effuses its atmosphere.
Then he is avowedly the poet of vista: to open doors and win-
dows, to let down bars rather than to put them up, to dissolve forms,
to escape boundaries, to plant the reader on a hill rather than in a
corner, — this fact is the explanation of the general character of his
work in respect to form.
Readers who have a keen sense of what is called artistic form in
poetry, meaning the sense of the deftly carved or shaped, are apt to
be repelled by the absence of all verse architecture in the poems.
A hostile critic might say they are not builded up, but heaped up.
But this would give a wrong impression, inasmuch as a piece of true
literature bears no necessary analogy to a house or the work of the
cabinet-maker. It may find its type or suggestion in a tree, a river,
or in any growing or expanding thing. Verse perfectly fluid, and
without any palpable, resisting extrinsic form whatever, or anything to
take his readers' attention away from himself and the content of his
page, was Whitman's aim.
Opinion will doubtless long be divided about the value of his
work. He said he was willing to wait to be understood by the
growth of the taste of himself. That this taste is growing, that the
new generations are coming more and more into his spirit and atmo-
sphere, that the mountain is less and less forbidding, and looms up
more and more as we get farther from it, is obvious enough. That
he will ever be in any sense a popular poet is in the highest degree
improbable: but that he will kindle enthusiasm in successive minds;
that he will be an enormous feeder to the coming poetic genius of
his country; that he will enlarge criticism, and make it easy for every
succeeding poet to be himself and to be American; and finally that
he will take his place among the few major poets of the race, I have
not the least doubt.
Josu
Aurroughs
## p. 15892 (#228) ##########################################
15892
WALT WHITMAN
[The following selections are used by permission of the legal representatives
of the estate of Walt Whitman. ]
I HEARD YOU SOLEMN-SWEET PIPES OF THE ORGAN
I
HEARD you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn
I passed the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walked the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretched sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of
the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last
night under my ear.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I
Foot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
AF
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.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return. )
2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
## p. 15893 (#229) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15893
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, 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 marketman, 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.
3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them
shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to
me.
You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges !
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you tirnber-lined
sides! you distant ships !
You rows of houses! you window-pierced façades! you roofs !
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touched you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to
me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive sur-
faces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and ami-
cable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the
road.
## p. 15894 (#230) ##########################################
15894
WALT WHITMAN
O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not — if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love
you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and all free
poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.
5
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say, .
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
[mine.
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to
me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I
go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze
me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appeared it would not
astonish me.
## p. 15895 (#231) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15895
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room.
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it. )
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under
the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing
currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love if they are vacant of you, you
are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashioned, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers ?
Do you know the talk of those turning eyeballs ?
7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embowered gates
ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why
are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the
sunlight expands my blood ?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
## p. 15896 (#232) ##########################################
15896
WALT WHITMAN
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and
always drop fruit as I pass :)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers ?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side ?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk
by and pause ?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what
gives me to be free to mine ?
8
The efflux of the Soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The Auid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of
man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day
out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and
sweet continually out of itself. )
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
love of young and old,
From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude
and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well enveloped,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However sheltered this port and however calm these waters we must
not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted
to receive it but a little while.
## p. 15897 (#233) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15897
IO
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage
the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determined bodies,
No diseased person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted
here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence. )
II
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough 'new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destined, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
toward you.
I 2
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road — they are the swift and majestic men-
they are the greatest women,
## p. 15898 (#234) ##########################################
15898
WALT WHITMAN
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of child-
ren, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded
and well-grained manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpassed, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or woman-
hood.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the
universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it
and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, how-
ever long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
låbor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstract-
ing one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple,
and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you
go,
## p. 15899 (#235) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15899
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments
- all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls, along the
grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dis-
satisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they
go,
But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed
faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and worldless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bed-
room, everywhere,
## p. 15900 (#236) ##########################################
15900
WALT WHITMAN
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
14
Allons! through struggles and wars !
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded ?
What has succeeded ? yourself? your nation ? Nature ?
Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things
that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater struggle neces-
sary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well armed,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry en-
emies, desertions.
15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well — be not
detained!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
shelf unopened!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain un-
earned!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live ?
## p. 15901 (#237) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15901
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
T"
"He last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the housetops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father drop together,
And the double grave awaits them. )
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined.
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing. )
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
## p. 15902 (#238) ##########################################
15902
WALT WHITMAN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOMED
I
HEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the
night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
WF
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -0 moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared -0 the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless - O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!
-
3
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed
palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong
I love,
With every leaf a miracle; — and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song. -
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die).
## p. 15903 (#239) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15903
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped
from the ground, spotting the gray débris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the end-
less grass,
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women
standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting dépôt, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these
you journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,-
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
For, fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, o death. )
## p. 15904 (#240) ##########################################
15904
WALT WHITMAN
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked,
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side (while the
other stars all looked on),
As we wandered together the solemn night (for something. I know
not what, kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full
you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black
of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you;
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
IO
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has
gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
II
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?
## p. 15905 (#241) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15905
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid
and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chim-
neys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.
I 2
Lo, body and soul — this land,
My, own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading, bathing all, the fulfilled noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses; pour your chant from the
bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer!
You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
XXVII–995
## p. 15906 (#242) ##########################################
15906
WALT WHITMAN
14
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and
forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturbed winds and the
storms),
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its
meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent-
lo, then and there,
[rest,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands
of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dim-
ness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands iny comrades in the night,
And the voice of iny spirit tallied the song of the bird.
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.
## p. 15907 (#243) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15907
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 it 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,
Lazed 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 ware whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled 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.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night,
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I
saw them,
## p. 15908 (#244) ##########################################
15908
WALT WHITMAN
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
-
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them;
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought, -
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not:
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my
soul,
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding
the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing
with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep,
for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and this for
his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
## p. 15909 (#245) ##########################################
WALT WHITMAN
15909
O 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,
Wnile 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-crowd-
ing;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has nor pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4th, 1865)
USHED be the camps to-day,
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate
Our dear commander's death.
H
No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat;- no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky,
## p. 15910 (#246) ##########################################
15910
WALT WHITMAN
But sing, poet, in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in camps,
know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing as they close the doors of earth upon him
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
one verse,
«DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL »
D
AREST thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O soul,
Nor dost thou; all is a blank before us;
All waits undreamed-of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all! ) them to fulfill, O soul.
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
A
NOISELESS patient spider
I marked, where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how, to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament; filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, () my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to con-
nect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you Aling catch somewhere, O my soul.
## p. 15910 (#247) ##########################################
## p. 15910 (#248) ##########################################
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3
## p. 15911 (#251) ##########################################
15911
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
(1807-1892)
BY GEORGE R. CARPENTER
ull appreciation of Whittier's work depends to an unusual
degree on an understanding of his life and character. The
verse of his equally celebrated contemporary, Longfellow,
for example, needs little explanation; Longfellow's career was that of
the student, the traveler, the genial professor. His tastes, his sympa-
thies, his ambitions, were not widely separated from those of men of
letters throughout the world. With Whittier the case was entirely
different. He was born of simple farming folk; his formal education
was merely that of the district school and the country academy; the
experience of travel was denied him. He sprang from the soil of
New England, showing to the full the virtues and defects of his an-
cestry and environment; and his singular merit is that he represents,
with extraordinary success, the most winning side of country life in
his native district, - its faith, its theocratic conception of the State, its
indignation at injustice, its stalwart upholding of the dignity of labor,
its old content in simple joys and simple duties. Not only has Whit-
tier expressed in his verse emotions peculiar in many ways to
America, and common to a large body of Americans, but there is no
other one of our poets, of the body of whose work this could be said.
That he was able thus to hold fast to old ideals, and to depict with
sympathy native life and country ways, — that he did not desert his
homely subjects and homely style for the more European matter and
diction of his contemporaries, — was due to circumstances that iso-
lated him from city life and the foreign influences that are so plainly
revealed in their work.
John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17th, 1807, in Haver-
hill, Massachusetts, of a family that had been permanently settled
in that immediate vicinity since the early days of the seventeenth
century. Until he was nearly twenty, he had no educational advan-
tages besides those afforded by the ordinary district school. In 1827
and 1828, however, he attended the Haverhill Academy. For a year
he was in the employ of a Boston printing-house, where he edited a
Protectionist paper and a temperance journal. For another year he
was the editor of the New England Weekly Review in Hartford, in
## p. 15912 (#252) ##########################################
15912
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
which he succeeded George D. Prentice. In 1833 he signed the
National Anti-Slavery Declaration as one of the delegates from Mas-
sachusetts; in 1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature;
in 1837 he was for a few months in New York as one of the secreta-
ries of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and from 1837 to 1840 he
was editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, a Philadelphia abolitionist
journal. With the exception of the absences occasioned by these
duties, Whittier's long life was almost entirely spent in Essex County,
Massachusetts; either in Haverhill, Amesbury, or Danvers. He died in
Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, September 8th, 1892. .
Thomas Whittier, the emigrant founder of the family, is said to
have been a Huguenot. His immense energy and unflinching devo-
tion to moral aims made him a typical Puritan: but he showed a
vein of unusual toleration in religious matters, by taking the side of
some persecuted members of the Society of Friends; and during his
lifetime his son married a Quaker. The wife's influence prevailed;
and henceforth, with few exceptions, the family followed her simple
and noble faith. Whittier's own father was an active, taciturn man,
the type of independent conservatism and of the virtuous and indus-
trious freeman on whom the commonwealth rests. His mother was an
equally fine type of the Quaker matron, whose religion found expres-
sion in an ideally beautiful character. His early life was that of the
ordinary country lad,— full of effort and discipline, free from affecta-
tion,-a circumscribed life, in which the outer world of cities is
unrealized, and the attention is rarely called beyond the limits of the
township and the county. The Whittiers were small farmers; and
their means and the Quaker creed alike discouraged special efforts
for worldly education. The boy performed, year in, year out, his
simple country tasks, acquiring the scant learning of the district
school, and retaining it with a firmness of grasp that was stimulated
by lack of wide opportunity. His native tongue he knew as only a
country boy of his time could know it, drawing deep from the homely
language of the people, which clung closer to the idioms of the great
centuries than did the diction of the lettered world,— a language
ennobled by the pioneer's close contact with life and nature, and
chastened by the constant influence of the Bible. He was early a
rhymester; and some lines sent to a local paper brought him to the
attention of a larger circle of friends and led to wider opportunities.
His facile, boyish verse dealt often with national history and public
interests, and his trend of mind led him to journalism and politics.
By 1832 he had won a name for himself in both fields, and seemed
likely to represent his district in Congress.
Two influences intervened to prevent Whittier's being drawn into
the vortex of the city and under the sway of its alien ideals, and
## p. 15913 (#253) ##########################################
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
15913
attached him permanently to the rural life of his boyhood. His del-
icate health made impossible for him the activity and anxiety of a
journalist's career; and his spirit, which was that of the reformer,
bound him to what then seemed the lost cause of the abolition
movement. To support oneself in the field of letters was then
scarcely possible; especially for an abolitionist, who was by no means
a welcome contributor to any periodical which sought a wide and
tolerant circulation. Debarred, therefore, from the professional pur-
suit of letters, journalism, and politics, Whittier resigned himself to
the quiet life of the countryman. Until he was past middle age his
copyrights were valueless: but he was for many years a paid con-
tributor to the most important abolitionist journal, the Washington
National Era, in which Uncle Tom's Cabin' appeared as a serial;
his habits were frugal and his wants few. When the success of his
political ideals was assured, when his voice was recognized through-
out the North as that of the poet of freedom, and the popularity of
his verse had put him beyond the reach of want, he still lived in
the homely fashion of his ancestors, shunning the jostle and jar of
cities and crowded resorts. An honored friend of the great and the
learned, he consistently held himself aloof from all entanglements
that would disturb the Quaker simplicity and Puritan strenuousness
of his life, always in perfect sympathy with the old New England
ideals and traditions.
Whittier's spirit was that of the reformer. As a boy he wrote
that he would rather have “the memory of a Howard, a Wilberforce,
or a Clarkson, than the undying fame of a Byron. ” As editor for a
time of an antislavery journal, and by his pamphlets and poems, he
was one of the foremost in advancing the claims of his despised but
rapidly growing party. In practical politics his services were equally
strenuous and even more effective. He was the friend and adviser
of statesmen; he was, on occasion, a shrewd lobbyist in the Massa-
chusetts Legislature; and in his own district he was the recognized
head of a party that held the balance of power, and was accustomed
cannily to pledge the candidate whom it honored with its vote. But
whatever were his secret services in the direction of public affairs,
Whittier first won his reputation by a remarkable series of anti-
slavery poems, which arrested attention and molded public opinion.
Beyond any other American poet, he had the power of expressing,
in a striking way, the latent thought of plain people. His Kansas
Emigrants became actually the song of those who
crossed the prairie, as of old
The Pilgrims crossed the sea. )
“We wait beneath the furnace blast,” were the words of every noble
Northern heart during the years of the great trial; and other verses
## p. 15914 (#254) ##########################################
15914
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
of far inferior quality, now forgotten, were not without a strong influ-
ence on all ranks of society, from the President and his Cabinet to
the lowest soldier and taxpayer. The best of these political tracts
in verse had in them the genuine singing quality of Whittier's best
work. They were all efficacious; but they were militant in quality,
instruments in a transient struggle, the product of discord and sec-
tional feeling, and hence hardly destined to live in the national mem-
ory. One ballad alone of this sort, Barbara Frietchie,' is thoroughly
familiar to the younger generation, and will long survive as a tribute
to Northern bravery and Southern chivalry.
Whittier's religious verse is much more national in character.
Here the progress of the century has worked as plainly for the per-
manence of his fame as it has worked against that of his political
verse. His political verse tended to perpetuate differences of opinion
that were soon settled forever. His religious verse, on the other
hand, steadily prefigured a unity of feeling to which gentle souls of
all creeds aspire. For many decades all the Protestant sects in
America have been moving slowly toward the Quaker standpoint, —
tending to acknowledge that always, by the mouths of prophets,
poets, priests, and philosophers, God hath revealed himself; and that
the living spirit of God, acting upon the hearts of men, is the great
guide in matters of conduct and belief. Whittier's Quaker tolerance,
his life of moral earnestness, his leisure for meditation, his own gen-
tle, unspotted character, and his simple way of taking the world, -
all these made him a fitting spokesman in verse of the most lib-
eral religious feeling of his day. The main motives of his creed are
always the “eternal goodness of God, and faith in immortality,–
truths so deeply rooted historically in the conceptions of our race
that denial of them has the air of painful novelty, as of some new
city notion that troubles but for an instant the abiding peace of the
ancestral and rural faith.
It is, however, by his verses on country life, rather than by his
political or religious poetry, that Whittier will be remembered.
