The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1886-02-13
BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
PART III.

d
although those have all been made the
subjects of wide discussion of late, both
in America and Great Britain, and have,
| think, bearing under the circum-
stances on his character and genius. 1t
is an unwritten tragedy that will doubt
less always remain unwrtten. | will
out allude to an eloquent appeal of the
Scotch poet, Robert Buchanan, pub.
lished in London in March, 1876 eu!o.
giving and defending the American bard
in his old age, illness and poverty, from
the swarms of maligners who still cor
tinue to assail him. The appeal has this
fine passage:
| He who wanders through the solitudes CT
far off list or lonely Donegal may often
behold the Golden Eagle sick to death, WON
with age or famine, or with both, passing
with weary watt from promontory to prom
ontory, from peak to peak, pdrsued by a
crowd of rocks and crows which fall back
screaming whenever the noble bird turls
| his indignant head, and which follow fran
tically once mere, hooting behind him,
whenever he wends again upon his way.
Skipping many things would yet like
to touch upon-for this paper is already
too long-1 will say in conclusion that if
any reader of mine is moved by what
have here written to undertake the pert
sal of Leaves of Grass" or the later
volume, Two Rivulets,' let me yet
warn him that he little suspects what is
before him. Poetry in the Virgilan,
| Tennysonian or Lowellian sense, it GER
tainly is not. Just as the living form of
man in its ordinary garb is less beautiful
| (Yet more beautifully than the marble
statue; just as the living woman and
child that may have sat for the model, is
less beautiful (yet more so) than one of
| Raphael's finest madonnas-or Just as a
forest of trees addresses itself less d.
rectly to the feeling Of what is called art
| and form than the house or other edifce
built from them; just as you, and the
whole spirit of our current times, have
been trained to feed on and enjoy, rot
Nature or Man, or the aboriginal forces,
or the actual, but pictures, books, art
and the selected and refned-just so
these poems will doubtless first shock
and disappoint you Your admiration
fer the beautiful is never the feeling d.
rectly and chiefly addressed in them, but
your love for the breathing flesh, the
concrete reality, the moving forms and
shows of the universe. a man reaches
and moves you, not an artist. Doubles,
too, certain withholding and repug-
nance has first to be overcome, analo-
gous to cold sea plunge-and it is not
till yon experience the reaction, the after
glow, and feel the swing and surge of
the strong waves, that you know what
Walt Whitman's pages really are. They
don't give themselves at first-like the
real landscape and the sea, they are all
indirections. You may have to try them
many times; there is something of Ma
lures rudeness and forbiddingness, not
only at the first, but probably always.
But after you have mastered them by
resigning yourself to them, there is moth
ing like them anywhere in literature for
vital help and meaning. The poet says:
The press of my foot to the earth springs
hundred affections,
That scorn the best ! can do to relate
them"
And the press of your mind to these
pages will certainly start new and count
less problems that poetry and art have
never before touched, and that afford
perpetual stimulus and delight. 1t has
been said that the object of poetry and
he higher forms of literature is to
'scape from the tyranny of the real into
he freedom of the ideal-but what is
the ideal unless ballasted and weighted
with the real? All these poems have
lofty ideal background; the great laws
md harmones stretch unerringly above
them, and give their vista and perspec.
tive. 1t is because Whitman's ideal is
.lothed with rank materiality, as the
.oul is clothed with the carnal body, that
lis poems beget such warmth and desire
the mind, and are the reservoirs of so
much power. No one can feel more
han l how absolutely necessary it is
hat the facts of nature and experience
re born again in the heart of the bard,
md receive the baptism of the true fire
before they be counted postical; and l
ave no trouble on this score with the
,uthor of Leaves of Grass" He never
ails to ascend into spiritual meanings.
Indeed, the spirituality of Walt Whit
mates every page he has written. OBJ
.erve that this singer and artist makes
. direct attempt to- be poetical, any
IN IRE than he does to be melodious or
rhythmical. He approaches these quail
i,s and results as it were from beneath,
n.d always indirectly; they are drawn
8, him, not he to them; and if they APP
Ear absent from his page at first it is
g., cause we were looking for them in the
customary places on the outside where
he never puts them, and had not yet
penetrated the interiors. AS many of
he fowls hide their eggs by sort of in
tuitive prudery and secretiveness, he al
Ways half hides, or more than half hides,
Ms thought, his glow, his magnetism,
his most golden and orbic treasures.
flually, as those men and women re-
spcct and love Walt Whitman best who
nave known him longest and closest per-
,onally, the same rule will apply to
Leaves of Grass" and the later volume,
Two Rivulets.' 1t is, indeed, neither
the first surface reading of those books,
nor perhaps even the second or third,
hat will any more than prepare the stu
Dent for the full assimilation of the
poems Like Nature, and like the
Sciences, they suggest endless suites of
chambers opening and expanding more
md more, and continually. What may
be cllled the mass movement of Whit
mans prose style, the rapid marshaling
nd grouping together Of many facts ard
details, gathering up, and recruiting, and
expanding, as the sentences move along,
till tie force and momentum become like
rolling food, or an army in echelonS on
the Gu lrge, is here displayed with Won
lcrful effect. Noting and studying what
| forces move the world, the only sane ex-