Part 13

The books they manufacture are handled by "the trade;" they are regarded as harmless. The pulpit does not object; the young person can read the monotonous pages without a blush--or a thought.

On the title pages of these books you will find the imprint of the great publishers; on the rest of the pages, nothing. These books might be prescribed for insomnia.

III.

Men of talent, men of business, touch life upon few sides. They travel but the beaten path. The creative spirit is not in them. They regard with suspicion a poet who touches life on every side. They have little confidence in that divine thing called sympathy, and they do not and cannot understand the man who enters into the hopes, the aims and the feelings of all others.

In all genius there is the touch of chaos--a little of the vagabond; and the successful tradesman, the man who buys and sells, or manages a bank, does not care to deal with a person who has only poems for collaterals; they have a little fear of such people, and regard them as the awkward countryman does a sleight-of-hand performer.

In every age in which books have been produced the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius. If what are known as the best people could have had their way, if the pulpit had been consulted--the provincial moralists--the works of Shakespeare would have been suppressed. Not a line would have reached our time. And the same may be said of every dramatist of his age.

If the Scotch Kirk could have decided, nothing would have been known of Robert Burns. If the good people, the orthodox, could have had their say, not one line of Voltaire would now be known. All the plates of the French Encyclopedia would have been destroyed with the thousands that were destroyed. Nothing would have been known of D'Alembert, Grimm, Diderot, or any of the Titans who warred against the thrones and altars and laid the foundation of modern literature not only, but what is of far greater moment, universal education.

It is not too much to say that every book now held in high esteem would have been destroyed, if those in authority could have had their will. Every book of modern times that has a real value, that has enlarged the intellectual horizon of mankind, that has developed the brain, that has furnished real food for thought, can be found in the Index Expurgatorius of the Papacy, and nearly every one has been commended to the free minds of men by the denunciations of Protestants.

If the guardians of society, the protectors of "young persons," could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent. If authority could have had its way, the world would have been as ignorant now as it was when our ancestors lived in holes or hung from dead limbs by their prehensile tails.

But we are not forced to go very far back. If Shakespeare had been published for the first time now, those divine plays--greater than continents and seas, greater even than the constellations of the midnight sky--would be excluded from the mails by the decision of the present enlightened postmaster-general.

The poets have always lived in an ideal world, and that ideal world has always been far better than the real world. As a consequence, they have forever roused, not simply the imagination, but the energies--the enthusiasm of the human race.

The great poets have been on the side of the oppressed--of the downtrodden. They have suffered with the imprisoned and the enslaved, and whenever and wherever man has suffered for the right, wherever the hero has been stricken down--whether on field or scaffold--some man of genius has walked by his side, and some poet has given form and expression, not simply to his deeds, but to his aspirations.

From the Greek and Roman world we still hear the voices of a few. The poets, the philosophers, the artists and the orators still speak. Countless millions have been covered by the waves of oblivion, but the few who uttered the elemental truths, who had sympathy for the whole human race, and who were great enough to prophesy a grander day, are as alive to-night as when they roused, by their bodily presence, by their living voices, by their works of art, the enthusiasm of their fellow-men.

Think of the respectable people, of the men of wealth and position, those who dwelt in mansions, children of success, who went down to the grave voiceless, and whose names we do not know. Think of the vast multitudes, the endless processions, that entered the caverns of eternal night, leaving no thought, no truth as a legacy to mankind!

The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.

IV.

Walt Whitman is in the highest sense a believer in democracy. He knows that there is but one excuse for government--the preservation of liberty, to the end that man may be happy. He knows that there is but one excuse for any institution, secular or religious--the preservation of liberty; and that there is but one excuse for schools, lor universal education, for the ascertainment of facts, namely, the preservation of liberty. He resents the arrogance and cruelty of power. He has sworn never to be tyrant or slave. He has solemnly declared:

"_I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms_."

This one declaration covers the entire ground. It is a declaration of independence, and it is also a declaration of justice, that is to say, a declaration of the independence of the individual, and a declaration that all shall be free. The man who has this spirit can truthfully say:

"_I have taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown. I am for those that have never been master'd._"

There is in Whitman what he calls "The boundless impatience of restraint," together with that sense of justice which compelled him to say, "Neither a servant nor a master am I."

He was wise enough to know that giving others the same rights that he claims for himself could not harm him, and he was great enough to say: "As if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same."

He felt as all should feel, that the liberty of no man is safe unless the liberty of each is safe.

There is in our country a little of the old servile spirit, a little of the bowing and cringing to others. Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people. Nothing is so demoralizing as the worship of place. Whitman has reminded the people of this country that they are supreme, and he has said to them:

"_The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him, The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them. Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you, Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you_."

He describes the ideal American citizen--the one who

"_Says indifferently and alike 'How are you, friend?' to the President at his levee, And he says 'Good-day, my brother,' to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field_."

Long ago, when the politicians were wrong, when the judges were subservient, when the pulpit was a coward, Walt Whitman shouted:

"_Man shall not hold property in man._"

"_The least develop'd person on earth is just as important and sacred to himself or herself as the most develop'd person is to himself or herself._"

This is the very soul of true democracy.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

Walt Whitman utters the elemental truths and is the poet of democracy. He is also the poet of individuality.

V. INDIVIDUALITY.

IN order to protect the liberties of a nation, we must protect the individual. A democracy is a nation of free individuals. The individuals are not to be sacrificed to the nation. The nation exists only for the purpose of guarding and protecting the individuality of men and women. Walt Whitman has told us that: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual--namely to You."

And he has also told us that the greatest city--the greatest nation--is "where the citizen is always the head and ideal."

And that

"_A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world._"

By this test maybe the greatest city on the continent to-night is Camden.

This poet has asked of us this question:

"_What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?_"

The man who asks this question has left no impress of his lips in the dust, and has no dirt upon his knees.

He was great enough to say:

"_The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own._"

He carries the idea of individuality to its utmost height:

"_What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?_"

Glorying in individuality, in the freedom of the soul, he cries out:

"O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God!"

And again:

"O the joy of a manly self-hood! To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,

To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,

To speak with full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth."

Walt Whitman is willing to stand alone. He is sufficient unto himself, and he says:

"Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune. Strong and content I travel the open road."

He is one of

"Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and Governors, as to say 'Who are you? '"

And not only this, but he has the courage to say: "Nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self." Walt Whitman is the poet of Individuality--the defender of the rights of each for the sake of all--and his sympathies are as wide as the world. He is the defender of the whole race.

VI. HUMANITY.

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

"I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks. Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.... I... see myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain. For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night. Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to him and walk by his side. Judge not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling upon a helpless thing."

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

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

"When the psalm sings instead of the singer, When the script preaches instead of the preacher, When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk, When I can touch the body of books by night or day, and when they touch my body back again," When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince, When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter, When warrantee deeds loaf in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions, I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and women like you."

VII.

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

"Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in the streets, A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short, last daylight of December, A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers. Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, The gate is pass'd, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses. The coffin is pass'd out, lower'd and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel'd in, The mound above is flatted with the spades--silence, A minute--no one moves or speaks--it is done, He is decently put away--is there anything more? He was a good fellow, free-mouth'd, quick-temper'd, not bad-looking, Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sicken'd, was helped by a contribution, Died, aged forty-one years--and that was his funeral."

Let me read you another description, one of a woman:

"Behold a woman! She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky. She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, The sun just shines on her old white head. Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel. The melodious character of the earth. The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go, The justified mother of men."

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?

"Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,) His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; Along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd, My captain lash'd fast with his own hands. We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water, On our lower gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels, They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

Our frigate takes fire, The other asks if we demand quarter? If our colors are struck and the fighting done? Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, 'We have not struck,' he composedly cries, 'we have just begun our part of the fighting.' Only three guns are in use, One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's mainmast, Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment's cease, The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazines. One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. Serene stands the little captain, He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon the surrender to us. Stretch'd and still lies the midnight, Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness. Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer'd, The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet, Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin, The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl'd whiskers, The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below, The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty, Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars, Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves, Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan."

Some people say that this is not poetry--that it lacks measure and rhyme.

VIII. WHAT IS POETRY?

THE whole world is engaged in the invisible commerce of thought. That is to say, in the exchange of thoughts by words, symbols, sounds, colors and forms. The motions of the silent, invisible world, where feeling glows and thought flames--that contains all seeds of action--are made known only by sounds and colors, forms, objects, relations, uses and qualities, so that the visible universe is a dictionary, an aggregation of symbols, by which and through which is carried on the invisible commerce of thought. Each object is capable of many meanings, or of being used in many ways to convey ideas or states of feeling or of facts that take place in the world of the brain.

The greatest poet is the one who selects the best, the most appropriate symbols to convey the best, the highest, the sublimest thoughts. Each man occupies a world of his own. He is the only citizen of his world. He is subject and sovereign, and the best he can do is to give the facts concerning the world in which he lives to the citizens of other worlds. No two of these worlds are alike. They are of all kinds, from the flat, barren, and uninteresting--from the small and shriveled and worthless--to those whose rivers and mountains and seas and constellations belittle and cheapen the visible world. The inhabitants of these marvelous worlds have been the singers of songs, utterers of great speech--the creators of art.

And here lies the difference between creators and imitators: the creator tells what passes in his own world--the imitator does not. The imitator abdicates, and by the fact of imitation falls upon his knees. He is like one who, hearing a traveler talk, pretends to others that he has traveled.

In nearly all lands, the poet has been privileged. For the sake of beauty, they have allowed him to speak, and for that reason he has told the story of the oppressed, and has excited the indignation of honest men and even the pity of tyrants. He, above all others, has added to the intellectual beauty of the world. He has been the true creator of language, and has left his impress on mankind.

What I have said is not only true of poetry--it is true of all speech. All are compelled to use the visible world as a dictionary. Words have been invented and are being invented, for the reason that new powers are found in the old symbols, new qualities, relations, uses and meanings. The growth of language is necessary on account of the development of the human mind. The savage needs but few symbols--the civilized many--the poet most of all.

The old idea was, however, that the poet must be a rhymer. Before printing was known, it was said: the rhyme assists the memory. That excuse no longer exists.

Is rhyme a necessary part of poetry? In my judgment, rhyme is a hindrance to expression. The rhymer is compelled to wander from his subject, to say more or less than he means, to introduce irrelevant matter that interferes continually with the dramatic action and is a perpetual obstruction to sincere utterance.

All poems, of necessity, must be short. The highly and purely poetic is the sudden bursting into blossom of a great and tender thought. The planting of the seed, the growth, the bud and flower must be rapid. The spring must be quick and warm, the soil perfect, the sunshine and rain enough--everything should tend to hasten, nothing to delay. In poetry, as in wit, the crystallization must be sudden.

The greatest poems are rhythmical. While rhyme is a hindrance, rhythm seems to be the comrade of the poetic. Rhythm has a natural foundation. Under emotion the blood rises and falls, the muscles contract and relax, and this action of the blood is as rhythmical as the rise and fall of the sea. In the highest form of expression the thought should be in harmony with this natural ebb and flow.

The highest poetic truth is expressed in rhythmical form. I have sometimes thought that an idea selects its own words, chooses its own garments, and that when the thought has possession, absolutely, of the speaker or writer, he unconsciously allows the thought to clothe itself.

The great poetry of the world keeps time with the winds and the waves.

I do not mean by rhythm a recurring accent at accurately measured intervals. Perfect time is the death of music. There should always be room for eager haste and delicious delay, and whatever change there may be in the rhythm or time, the action itself should suggest perfect freedom.

A word more about rhythm. I believe that certain feelings and passions---joy, grief, emulation, revenge, produce certain molecular movements in the brain--that every thought is accompanied by certain physical phenomena. Now, it may be that certain sounds, colors, and forms produce the same molecular action in the brain that accompanies certain feelings, and that these sounds, colors and forms produce first the molecular movements and these in their turn reproduce the feelings, emotions and states of mind capable of producing the same or like molecular movements. So that what we call heroic music produces the same molecular action in the brain--the same physical changes--that are produced by the real feeling of heroism; that the sounds we call plaintive produce the same molecular movement in the brain that grief, or the twilight of grief, actually produces. There may be a rhythmical molecular movement belonging to each state of mind, that accompanies each thought or passion, and it may be that music, or painting, or sculpture, produces the same state of mind or feeling that produces the music or painting or sculpture, by producing the same molecular movements.