Part 58

Death--too great a subject to be treated so--indeed the greatest subject--and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it--as one writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing mail. Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted, may leave a lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am probably fond of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and by side-ways and suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or skilful players--then poetic glints still more--put the soul in rapport with death, or toward it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late "Crossing the Bar":

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The floods may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.

Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain of Phrynichus long ago to one of old Athens' favorites:

Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age, Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd, He died; his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.

Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, at twilight--or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie or on mountain road, for that matter--favor the right mood. Words are difficult--even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads or songs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous'd so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the after-realm, as no statement or sermon could--and brought it hovering near. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a physiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of it really begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly shaped and affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every thing from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something (Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an opposite coloring:

I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown, That whisper of the Eternal Sea; As low my fires of driftwood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.

Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimes sets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In not a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at all the general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark' d suffering or agony _in extremis_ were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition are blunted or even gone.)

Then to give the following, and cease before the thought gets threadbare:

Now, land and life, finale, and farewell! Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;) Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas, Cautiously cruising, studying the charts, Duly again to port and hawser's tie returning. --But now obey thy cherish'd, secret wish, Embrace thy friends--leave all in order; To port and hawser's tie no more returning, Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!

SOME LAGGARDS YET

THE PERFECT HUMAN VOICE

Stating it briefly and pointedly I should suggest that the human voice is a cultivation or form'd growth on a fair native foundation. This foundation probably exists in nine cases out of ten. Sometimes nature affords the vocal organ in perfection, or rather I would say near enough to whet one's appreciation and appetite for a voice that might be truly call'd perfection. To me the grand voice is mainly physiological--(by which I by no means ignore the mental help, but wish to keep the emphasis where it belongs.) Emerson says _manners_ form the representative apex and final charm and captivation of humanity: but he might as well have changed the typicality to voice.

Of course there is much taught and written about elocution, the best reading, speaking, &c., but it finally settles down to _best_ human vocalization. Beyond all other power and beauty, there is something in the quality and power of the right voice (_timbre_ the schools call it) that touches the soul, the abysms. It was not for nothing that the Greeks depended, at their highest, on poetry's and wisdom's vocal utterance by _tete-a-tete_ lectures--(indeed all the ancients did.)

Of celebrated people possessing this wonderful vocal power, patent to me, in former days, I should specify the contralto Alboni, Elias Hicks, Father Taylor, the tenor Bettini, Fanny Kemble, and the old actor Booth, and in private life many cases, often women. I sometimes wonder whether the best philosophy and poetry, or something like the best, after all these centuries, perhaps waits to be rous'd out yet, or suggested, by the perfect physiological human voice.

SHAKSPERE FOR AMERICA

Let me send you a supplementary word to that "view" of Shakspere attributed to me, publish'd in your July number,[47] and so courteously worded by the reviewer (thanks! dear friend.) But you have left out what, perhaps, is the main point, as follows:

"Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual and democratic, the sceptres of the future." (See pp. 55-58 in "November Boughs," and also some of my further notions on Shakspere.)

The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry of concrete and real things,--the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the myths anyhow. But the New World (America) is the region of the future, and its poetry must be spiritual and democratic. Evolution is not the rule in Nature, in Politics, and Inventions only, but in Verse. I know our age is greatly materialistic, but it is greatly spiritual, too, and the future will be, too. Even what we moderns have come to mean by _spirituality_ (while including what the Hebraic utterers, and mainly perhaps all the Greek and other old typical poets, and also the later ones, meant) has so expanded and color'd and vivified the comprehension of the term, that it is quite a different one from the past. Then science, the final critic of all, has the casting vote for future poetry.

Note:

[47] This bit was in "Poet-lore" monthly for September, 1890.

"UNASSAIL'D RENOWN"

The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to several persons, and giving the responses, says, "Walt Whitman's views [as follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any other contributor to the discussion":

Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19--the question whether I think any American poet not now living deserves a place among the thirteen "English inheritors of unassail'd renown" (Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats,)--and which American poets would be truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down, down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune, profound and friendly articles on Bryant's and Longfellow's deaths, spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America (her poets and poetic students) "coming in possession of a great estate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn"; and the further contingency of "the English language ever having annex'd to it a lot of first-class Poetry that would be American, not European"--proving then something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhaps that is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen British immortals mention'd--after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminence of fame not to be invaded yet--the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittier and Longfellow (with even added names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve in my opinion an equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on the dozen of that glorious list.

INSCRIPTION FOR A LITTLE BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO

As America's mental courage (the thought comes to me to-day) is so indebted, above all current lands and peoples, to the noble army of Old-World martyrs past, how incumbent on us that we clear those martyrs' lives and names, and hold them up for reverent admiration, as well as beacons. And typical of this, and standing for it and all perhaps, Giordano Bruno may well be put, to-day and to come, in our New World's thankfulest heart and memory.

W.W. CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _February 24th, 1890_.

SPLINTERS

While I stand in reverence before the fact of Humanity, the People, I will confess, in writing my L. of G., the least consideration out of all that has had to do with it has been the consideration of "the public"--at any rate as it now exists. Strange as it may sound for a democrat to say so, I am clear that no free and original and lofty-soaring poem, or one ambitious of those achievements, can possibly be fulfill'd by any writer who has largely in his thought _the public_--or the question, What will establish'd literature--What will the current authorities say about it?

As far as I have sought any, not the best laid out garden or parterre has been my model--but Nature has been. I know that in a sense the garden is nature too, but I had to choose--I could not give both. Besides the gardens are well represented in poetry; while Nature (in letter and in spirit, in the divine essence,) little if at all.

Certainly, (while I have not hit it by a long shot,) I have aim'd at the most ambitious, the best--and sometimes feel to advance that aim (even with all its arrogance) as the most redeeming part of my books. I have never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectual palates--but if I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibility in every soul for its own true exercise! if I could only wield that lever!

Out from the well-tended concrete and the physical--and in them and from them only--radiate the spiritual and heroic.

Undoubtedly many points belonging to this essay--perhaps of the greatest necessity, fitness and importance to it--have been left out or forgotten. But the amount of the whole matter--poems, preface and everything--is merely to make one of those little punctures or eyelets the actors possess in the theatre-curtains to look out upon "the house"--one brief, honest, living glance.

HEALTH, (OLD STYLE)

In that condition the whole body is elevated to a state by others unknown--inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid, strong, yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, flickers out of, and over, the face--a curious transparency beams in the eyes, both in the iris and the white--the temper partakes also. Nothing that happens--no event, rencontre, weather, &c--but it is confronted--nothing but is subdued into sustenance--such is the marvellous transformation from the old timorousness and the old process of causes and effects. Sorrows and disappointments cease--there is no more borrowing trouble in advance. A man realizes the venerable myth--he is a god walking the earth, he sees new eligibilities, powers and beauties everywhere; he himself has a new eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion takes a previously unknown grace. Merely _to move_ is then a happiness, a pleasure--to breathe, to see, is also. All the beforehand gratifications, drink, spirits, coffee, grease, stimulants, mixtures, late hours, luxuries, deeds of the night, seem as vexatious dreams, and now the awakening;--many fall into their natural places, whole-some, conveying diviner joys.

What I append--Health, old style--I have long treasur'd--found originally in some scrap-book fifty years ago--a favorite of mine (but quite a glaring contrast to my present bodily state:)

On a high rock above the vast abyss, Whose solid base tumultuous waters lave; Whose airy high-top balmy breezes kiss, Fresh from the white foam of the circling wave--

There ruddy HEALTH, in rude majestic state, His clust'ring forelock combatting the winds-- Bares to each season's change his breast elate, And still fresh vigor from th' encounter finds;

With mighty mind to every fortune braced, To every climate each corporeal power, And high-proof heart, impenetrably cased, He mocks the quick transitions of the hour.

Now could he hug bleak Zembla's bolted snow, Now to Arabia's heated deserts turn, Yet bids the biting blast more fiercely blow, The scorching sun without abatement burn.

There this bold Outlaw, rising with the morn, His sinewy functions fitted for the toil, Pursues, with tireless steps, the rapturous horn, And bears in triumph back the shaggy spoil.

Or, on his rugged range of towering hills, Turns the stiff glebe behind his hardy team; His wide-spread heaths to blithest measures tills, And boasts the joys of life are not a dream!

Then to his airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to rest unbroken bows.

On his smooth forehead, Time's old annual score, Tho' left to furrow, yet disdains to lie; He bids weak sorrow tantalize no more, And puts the cup of care contemptuous by.

If, from some inland height, that, skirting, bears Its rude encroachments far into the vale, He views where poor dishonor'd nature wears On her soft cheek alone the lily pale;

How will he scorn alliance with the race, Those aspen shoots that shiver at a breath; Children of sloth, that danger dare not face, And find in life but an extended death:

Then from the silken reptiles will he fly, To the bold cliff in bounding transports run, And stretch'd o'er many a wave his ardent eye, Embrace the enduring Sea-Boy as his son!

Yes! thine alone--from pain, from sorrow free, The lengthen'd life with peerless joys replete; Then let me, Lord of Mountains, share with thee The hard, the early toil--the relaxation sweet.

GAY-HEARTEDNESS

Walking on the old Navy Yard bridge, Washington, D. C., once with a companion, Mr. Marshall, from England, a great traveler and observer, as a squad of laughing young black girls pass'd us--then two copper-color'd boys, one good-looking lad 15 or 16, barefoot, running after--"What _gay creatures_ they all appear to be," said Mr. M. Then we fell to talking about the general lack of buoyant animal spirits. "I think," said Mr. M., "that in all my travels, and all my intercourse with people of every and any class, especially the cultivated ones, (the literary and fashionable folks,) I have never yet come across what I should call a really GAY-HEARTED MAN."

It was a terrible criticism--cut into me like a surgeon's lance. Made me silent the whole walk home.

AS IN A SWOON.

As in a swoon, one instant, Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me, And all the orbs I knew--and brighter, unknown orbs; One instant of the future land, Heaven's land.

L. OF G.

Thoughts, suggestions, aspirations, pictures, Cities and farms--by day and night--book of peace and war, Of platitudes and of the commonplace.

For out-door health, the land and sea--for good will, For America--for all the earth, all nations, the common people, (Not of one nation only--not America only.)

In it each claim, ideal, line, by all lines, claims, ideals, temper'd; Each right and wish by other wishes, rights.

AFTER THE ARGUMENT.

A group of little children with their ways and chatter flow in, Like welcome rippling water o'er my heated nerves and flesh.

FOR US TWO, READER DEAR.

Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging, With the original testimony for us continued to the last.

MEMORANDA

[Let me indeed turn upon myself a little of the light I have been so fond of casting on others.

Of course these few exceptional later mems are far, far short of one's concluding history or thoughts or life-giving--only a hap-hazard pinch of all. But the old Greek proverb put it, "Anybody who really has a good quality" (or bad one either, I guess) "has _all_." There's something in the proverb; but you mustn't carry it too far.

I will not reject any theme or subject because the treatment is too personal.

As my stuff settles into shape, I am told (and sometimes myself discover, uneasily, but feel all right about it in calmer moments) it is mainly autobiographic, and even egotistic after all--which I finally accept, and am contented so.

If this little volume betrays, as it doubtless does, a weakening hand, and decrepitude, remember it is knit together out of accumulated sickness, inertia, physical disablement, acute pain, and listlessness. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being chain'd to a chair--as never before. Only the resolve to keep up, and on, and to add a remnant, and even perhaps obstinately see what failing powers and decay may contribute too, have produced it.

And now as from some fisherman's net hauling all sorts, and disbursing the same.]

A WORLD'S SHOW

_New York, Great Exposition open'd in 1853._--I went a long time (nearly a year)--days and nights--especially the latter--as it was finely lighted, and had a very large and copious exhibition gallery of paintings (shown at best at night, I tho't)--hundreds of pictures from Europe, many masterpieces--all an exhaustless study--and, scatter'd thro' the building, sculptures, single figures or groups--among the rest, Thorwaldsen's "Apostles," colossal in size--and very many fine bronzes, pieces of plate from English silversmiths, and curios from everywhere abroad--with woods from all lands of the earth--all sorts of fabrics and products and handiwork from the workers of all nations.

NEW YORK--THE BAY--THE OLD NAME

_Commencement of a gossipy travelling letter in a New York city paper, May 10, 1879_.--My month's visit is about up; but before I get back to Camden let me print some jottings of the last four weeks. Have you not, reader dear, among your intimate friends, some one, temporarily absent, whose letters to you, avoiding all the big topics and disquisitions, give only minor, gossipy sights and scenes--just as they come--subjects disdain'd by solid writers, but interesting to you because they were such as happen to everybody, and were the moving entourage to your friend--to his or her steps, eyes, mentality? Well, with an idea something of that kind, I suppose, I set out on the following hurrygraphs of a breezy early-summer visit to New York city and up the North river--especially at present of some hours along Broadway.

_What I came to New York for_.--To try the experiment of a lecture--to see whether I could stand it, and whether an audience could--was my specific object. Some friends had invited me--it was by no means clear how it would end--I stipulated that they should get only a third-rate hall, and not sound the advertising trumpets a bit--and so I started. I much wanted something to do for occupation, consistent with my limping and paralyzed state. And now, since it came off, and since neither my hearers nor I myself really collaps'd at the aforesaid lecture, I intend to go up and down the land (in moderation,) seeking whom I may devour, with lectures, and reading of my own poems--short pulls, however--never exceeding an hour.

_Crossing from Jersey city, 5 to 6 P.M._--The city part of the North river with its life, breadth, peculiarities--the amplitude of sea and wharf, cargo and commerce--one don't realize them till one has been away a long time and, as now returning, (crossing from Jersey city to Desbrosses-st.,) gazes on the unrivall'd panorama, and far down the thin-vapor'd vistas of the bay, toward the Narrows--or northward up the Hudson--or on the ample spread and infinite variety, free and floating, of the more immediate views--a countless river series--everything moving, yet so easy, and such plenty of room! Little, I say, do folks here appreciate the most ample, eligible, picturesque bay and estuary surroundings in the world! This is the third time such a conviction has come to me after absence, returning to New York, dwelling on its magnificent entrances--approaching the city by them from any point.

More and more, too, the _old name_ absorbs into me--MANNAHATTA, "the place encircled by many swift tides and sparkling waters." How fit a name for America's great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!

A SICK SPELL

_Christmas Day, 25th Dec., 1888_.--Am somewhat easier and freer to-day and the last three days--sit up most of the time--read and write, and receive my visitors. Have now been in-doors sick for seven months--half of the time bad, bad, vertigo, indigestion, bladder, gastric, head trouble, inertia--Dr. Bucke, Dr. Osler, Drs. Wharton and Walsh--now Edward Wilkins my help and nurse. A fine, splendid, sunny day. My "November Boughs" is printed and out; and my "Complete Works, Poems and Prose," a big volume, 900 pages, also. It is ab't noon, and I sit here pretty comfortable.

TO BE PRESENT ONLY

_At the Complimentary Dinner, Camden, New Jersey, May 31, 1889_.--Walt Whitman said: My friends, though announced to give an address, there is no such intention. Following the impulse of the spirit, (for I am at least half of Quaker stock) I have obey'd the command to come and look at you, for a minute, and show myself, face to face; which is probably the best I can do. But I have felt no command to make a speech; and shall not therefore attempt any. All I have felt the imperative conviction to say I have already printed in my books of poems or prose; to which I refer any who may be curious. And so, hail and farewell. Deeply acknowledging this deep compliment, with my best respects and love to you personally--to Camden--to New-Jersey, and to all represented here--you must excuse me from any word further.

"INTESTINAL AGITATION"

_From Pall-Mall Gazette, London, England, Feb 8, 1890_ Mr. Ernest Rhys has just receiv'd an interesting letter from Walt Whitman, dated "Camden, January 22, 1890." The following is an extract from it:

I am still here--no very mark'd or significant change or happening--fairly buoyant spirits, &c.--but surely, slowly ebbing. At this moment sitting here, in my den, Mickle street, by the oakwood fire, in the same big strong old chair with wolf-skin spread over back--bright sun, cold, dry winter day. America continues--is generally busy enough all over her vast demesnes (intestinal agitation I call it,) talking, plodding, making money, every one trying to get on--perhaps to get towards the top--but no special individual signalism--(just as well, I guess.)

"WALT WHITMAN'S LAST 'PUBLIC'"

The gay and crowded audience at the Art Rooms, Philadelphia, Tuesday night, April 15, 1890, says a correspondent of the Boston _Transcript_, April 19, might not have thought that W. W. crawl'd out of a sick bed a few hours before, crying,

Dangers retreat when boldly they're confronted,

and went over, hoarse and half blind, to deliver his memoranda and essay on the death of Abraham Lincoln, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of that tragedy. He led off with the following new paragraph: