Smyrna times., 1892-04-06

HERE was much ado last week bv
certain class of people over the deatl
OF walt Whitman, whom they choos,
TO call The Good Gray Poet" Tn,
daily papers, or certain of them. boG
columns in reference to his life and
writings, and 5000 or 1000 people at.
tended his funeral in Camden N. / n
hear the Grafton of Col. Ingersol and
Others who relished his "realism" as
expressed in his writings. These peo.
pie expressed admiration for what thew
called his genius, while apologising for
much that he said, but the Cecil Wbio
looks at the man and what he wrote
from another standpoint and saw him
IN different light as follows:
Walt Whitman is dead
why walt Whitman was born. wbv
he lived, or for what good purnose he
worked as man of letters. is a riddIe
that future more intelligent than the
present must vOuchsafe to exDlain
There be men of reputed wit and
learning who say he was a thinker.
Ihere be also those of pronounced
claims to poetic skill and fervor wbo
insist he was a poet.
There be others who play the Abou-
Ben-Adhelm role, who insist that he
was a philanthropist.
Ii he was anything else than a wilfnI
sometimes defiant and always reckless
disregarder of all life's conventionaIi-
ties, in literature, in living. or in
morals, the writer has sadly failed to
find it. ~
In most that was personal Wolf
whitman was an insult to his race. He
was neither decent nor simulated de.
cency. ''''U U0-
, In all that was literary, he was q
SulilVanlc challenge to the limits of
human fOrbearance.
He neither recognized rules. nor res.
pected those who did.
Ia all that was and is bestial he was
triumphant evidence that the line
dlVldlng the man from the animal ia
altogether too finely drawn.
emerson may strive to vindicate the
admiration of him, that he too
hastily expressed but, in doing so
he only reveals the Emerson csrnoI
at war with the Emerson spiritually
mental. 'J
Iennyson, after mindless wander
ing about the idealistic Lockslev Hall
may have found surcease from the
true, the beautiful and the good. in the
neshly maunderings of this haIf-man
nalt-luster; but he forgot he was
Iennyson, while he adulated Walt
Whitman. AiV
SwinbOurne may have accented him
as heather prototype. and bonoroJ
the creature that dared be more bestiaI
tnan ne affected but even SwinbOurne
might nave been dazed at the enormitv
OF the ohendlng which he had tim |
eled in.
A philanthropist Whitman might
nave been, as the tigress nurses its
cubs, and the Cyprian assuages the
ellghtlng agony of her victims.
But, for all that is human in human.
lty, for all that is brothePly in frater-
nifty, TOR all that is pure and sympa-
Ihetlc in loves eestacies, for all that is
enno0llng in heart impulses, for all
that is divine in divinity. NAV the
child hereafter, the intelligent inter
prefer OF all that God has made. and
why he made it, be faithfully preserved
and carefully kept, from the impious
the unreal ecstacies, and the
ncongruOus effronteries of such as
Walt Whitman.
alas /! 'IN
He was not what he was till he had
grown gray. He was never good. and
;annot be, till grossness and 6ass
disregard of all that is noble in
humanity, shall earn perpetual OBJ
Oquy.
He enshrined love and called it lust.
he reveled in shameless natural
less" and dubbed it virtue.
He would even rob Mother Eve of
Ter ig leaves, and prate of the specta-
lie IN pretentiOus iDnocency.
The plumed Indian would rebuke
lis 0razenness, and many a domestic
ninal give him sadly needed lessons
q delicacy.
A society founded on or even toler.
ting the disgusting "naturalness' of
Walt Whitman, might find fitting sym-
athy in the Aborigines of Zululand.