The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1919-05-18
The AnSWerer::
Walt Whitman
Edith Franklin Wyatt in
North American Review

There is a season of the year in the
Middle West in late May when the
snring ends and the summer begins,
that always seems to breathe with es-
pecial freshness the sense OF conunu-
ing change in the ways of nature. Lilac
blooms fall. coumbines first sway their
delicate horns of pale scarlet ana faWh-
color Visiting Grace-land cemetery in
| Chicago | was stirred on last Decoration
Day to see that the city graveyard was
filled as never before with men. Wo-
and children. 1t was as though in the
year since we had entered the struggle
of the European War. the city'S sym
pathies had moved not only forward
TO the appreciation of an international
future, but back to IA quicker under
standing of our memories of struggle
for democracy.
Soldiers and civilians. the bugled
strains of far music, rising and falling
to the pulse of distant drum-beats, the
flags clear white and crimson stripes
and dark blue starfieldS fluttering
against the turf under the delicately-
crowds of people carrying the colors,
and palm.wreaths and baskets of gera-
niums-al this quietly peopled scene
of the city of the living seemed in an
ineffable accord with the invisible spir-
il of the dead and Of her camps Of
green"
IF one could have chosen time Tor
the birthday of the greatest poet of de-
mocracy it would have been this very
season: and it seems especially fitting
that Whitman, the destined singer OF
our national hope. our dearest com
mon purpose should have been born
the last of May "a hundred years ago,
in the age of dream that was dying
and one that was coming to birth.
Whtmans answers about how de
mocracy must proceed by march in
, the ranks hardpressed and the road
unknown; about the poetry of open
ways; of common service for multi
tudes; about how to live your own life,
whatever yours means; about sex, and
the native powers of women-these fine
replies are all to be heard in the hu-
man conversation of Whiteman's non
| lyflG WRITINGS, ana Vi ms mt
But in all except some of the lesser
turns of his thought, these truths are
all given in that great singing voice
of his which il a national glory-in
the songs Of the open road that tell
YOU yourself is good-fortune; in the
songs that gpieve for bereavement
down all space and time through the
moody and fearful night; and comfort
shame and wrong and shining in their
poverties. wincings, and sulky retreats;
and rise and fall on forever as rain falls
from the heavens and vapors rise from
the earth from the thousand responses
Of the heart, never to cease.
| Here is the reply of the Answerer who
has undertaken to be responsible for
democracy. Better than any one might
| have hoped, it seems to me, he tells
us what we are all here for; sings US
songs that we can hear before they
begin and long after they are ended.
He saws that they are for those to
come after him. and we may believe
| indeed that this is true; and that the
music he says he had always around
him unceasing. unbecoming, yet long
Iuntaught he did not hear, is not only
for the bravest unnamed soldiers of
the past. but for those of the future.