New-York tribune., 1919-05-31
The Great Walt

wills. 1t was the great Waits notion
that he was founding wholly new art,
the poetry of democracy. Stones he
brought for new and glorious temple
of the people. The form was to be freer,
vaster. The audience was to be not
private few but the whole people.
Fame has since come to him in over
flowing measure but not the acclaim Of
the people he so loved and whose ap-
proval he courted. "The ploughmen
ploughng farms, the miners digging
smines, the mechanics busy at their
benches with tools" that he celebrated
have passed Walt by. Seldom has there
been a great poet more utterly cavlare
to the great public A few sensitive and
cultured poets led the way in apprecia-
ton of him. 1t is still the small minor
ity of wise and open-minded souls who
know and love the magnificent surge of
his vast, Homeric lines.
Wide popular liking is probably i'm
possible for such loose and Irregular
melodies. The lifting song is easiest re-
membered, has the shortest road to the
heart. Burns, for instance-could Whit
man ever becomes poet Of the people in
the same sense? Almost certainly not,
we may guess, however far and long
democracy travels.
Nor has his freer form prevailed.
Something Of it's inspiration shows in
some of our present versifers. But it
has made not the slightest headway as
the peculiar vehicle of democracy. 1t is
used by sensitive imagists quite as much
as for "barbaric yawps" by the avowed
poets of democracy. We realize that the
form was for Walt Whitman his own
self ultimated. We could not and would
not have him otherwise. But it stands
as something unique, defying imitation
or pupil or successor.
Yet, unquestonably, it is as the poet
Of democracy that Whitman has become
great, the poet of that democracy which
we love because it is ours, American.
He has sounded forth our faith as no
other man has. Such is the paradox.
Let us see what it means:
SOLITARY, singing in the West, I strike up
for a new world"
That was the note which gained Whit
man his first followers in England, and
it is as the poetical interpreter Of our
Declaration Of independence that Whit
man counts greatly with Americans of
to-day. This new world of ours, not so
new as we thought in some ways, full
of old jealousies and old ambitions-full
of human beings, in short-s, none the
less, in sense, and vital sense, and
spite of all the cynics, new. No political
philosopher has ever expressed that
newness as has Walt Whitman. No poet
has ever sung America as she is in our
hearts and can be in our lives as glor-
ously as has Walt Whitman
Fundamentally that newness is neither
a political form nor a social order, but a
new rebirth Of faith in human beings.
We believe and we practise that people
are not ordered automatons, but dynamic
forces, capable of amazing growth and
down to the meanest, rich with the best
stuff Of character and life. A mystic,
transcendental faith, undoubtedly, as
daring and far-fung as the democracy of
Christ. In our fumbling, human, bicker-
ing way we have struggled to live up to
this democratic faith, and have succeed
ed beyond any other attempt in the his
tory of the world. There is not always
or everywhere fair play. We do not
stress the right Abilities We fail wofully
again and again. We do, however, keep
our faith alive; we do work more of it
into our daily life than has ever entered
any great nations life before.
In the growth of that faith, in keeping
it alive, in upholding the torch, Walt
Whitman has played vital part. Like
Lincoln, he lived and was the faith that
he expressed. He made his point not
by presenting theory or pleading the
case Of any one class Of mankind, but by
/ hymning all humans. For that hymn,
barbaric, uncouth, vast, he probably
ranks with the great artists of all time.
Not even his beautiful lyrics, "a Word
Out Of the Sea- "When Lilacs Last in
the Dooryard Bloomed," can count
equally with the broad sweep of demo-
cratic faith flowing throughout his work.
But that hymn has failed to reach the
very ones for whom it was written. The
poet of democracy has remained the poet
of the few. The hymn of democracy
has become the private inspiration of
democracys wise and understanding. Is
there hopeless inconsistency here?
Has Waits whole temple collapsed be-
cause he pushed his faith too far, be-
cause his faith in new and democratic
art has not been proved by the years?