SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK
THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME
BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE
CITY OF SHIPS
VIGIL ON THE FIELD
THE FLAG
THE WOUNDED
A SIGHT IN CAMP
A GRAVE
THE DRESSER
A LETTER FROM CAMP
WAR DREAMS
THE VETERAN'S VISION
O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY
MANHATTAN FACES
OVER THE CARNAGE
THE MOTHER OF ALL
CAMPS OF GREEN
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
SURVIVORS
HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE
RECONCILIATION
AFTER THE WAR
WALT WHITMAN: ASSIMILATIONS A WORD OUT OF THE SEA CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY NIGHT AND DEATH ELEMENTAL DRIFTS WONDERS MIRACLES VISAGES THE DARK SIDE MUSIC WHEREFORE? QUESTIONABLE SONG AT SUNSET LONGINGS FOR HOME APPEARANCES THE FRIEND MEETING AGAIN A DREAM PARTING FRIENDS TO A STRANGER OTHER LANDS ENVY THE CITY OF FRIENDS OUT OF THE CROWD AMONG THE MULTITUDE
LEAVES OF GRASS: PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! (FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN) PIONEERS! O PIONEERS TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS VOICES WHOSOEVER BEGINNERS TO A PUPIL LINKS THE WATERS TO THE STATES TEARS A SHIP GREATNESSES THE POET BURIAL THIS COMPOST DESPAIRING CRIES THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE UNNAMED LANDS SIMILITUDE THE SQUARE DEIFIC
SONGS OF PARTING: SINGERS AND POETS TO A HISTORIAN FIT AUDIENCE SINGING IN SPRING LOVE OF COMRADES PULSE OF MY LIFE AUXILIARIES REALITIES NEARING DEPARTURE POETS TO COME CENTURIES HENCE SO LONG!
POSTSCRIPT
PREFATORY NOTICE.
During the summer of 1867 I had the opportunity (which I had often wished for) of expressing in print my estimate and admiration of the works of the American poet Walt Whitman.[1] Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences. One of these is the invitation which I have received to edit a selection from Whitman's writings; virtually the first sample of his work ever published in England, and offering the first tolerably fair chance he has had of making his way with English readers on his own showing. Hitherto, such readers—except the small percentage of them to whom it has happened to come across the poems in some one of their American editions—have picked acquaintance with them only through the medium of newspaper extracts and criticisms, mostly short-sighted, sneering, and depreciatory, and rather intercepting than forwarding the candid construction which people might be willing to put upon the poems, alike in their beauties and their aberrations. Some English critics, no doubt, have been more discerning—as W. J. Fox, of old, in the Dispatch, the writer of the notice in the Leader, and of late two in the Pall Mall Gazette and the London Review;[2] but these have been the exceptions among us, the great majority of the reviewers presenting that happy and familiar critical combination—scurrility and superciliousness.
[Footnote 1: See The Chronicle for 6th July 1867, article Walt Whitman's Poems.]
[Footnote 2: Since this Prefatory Notice was written [in 1868], another eulogistic review of Whitman has appeared—that by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in the Broadway.]
As it was my lot to set down so recently several of the considerations which seem to me most essential and most obvious in regard to Whitman's writings, I can scarcely now recur to the subject without either repeating something of what I then said, or else leaving unstated some points of principal importance. I shall therefore adopt the simplest course—that of summarising the critical remarks in my former article; after which, I shall leave without further development (ample as is the amount of development most of them would claim) the particular topics there glanced at, and shall proceed to some other phases of the subject.
Whitman republished in 1867 his complete poetical works in one moderate- sized volume, consisting of the whole Leaves of Grass, with a sort of supplement thereto named Songs before Parting,[3] and of the Drum Taps, with its Sequel. It has been intimated that he does not expect to write any more poems, unless it might be in expression of the religious side of man's nature. However, one poem on the last American harvest sown and reaped by those who had been soldiers in the great war, has already appeared since the volume in question, and has been republished in England.
[Footnote 3: In a copy of the book revised by Whitman himself, which we have seen, this title is modified into Songs of Parting.]
Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry, such as Shakespeare furnishes the precedent for in drama. Still there is a very powerful and majestic rhythmical sense throughout.
Lavish and persistent has been the abuse poured forth upon Whitman by his own countrymen; the tricklings of the British press give but a moderate idea of it. The poet is known to repay scorn with scorn. Emerson can, however, from the first be claimed as on Whitman's side; nor, it is understood after some inquiry, has that great thinker since then retreated from this position in fundamentals, although his admiration may have entailed some worry upon him, and reports of his recantation have been rife. Of other writers on Whitman's side, expressing themselves with no measured enthusiasm, one may cite Mr. M. D. Conway; Mr. W. D. O'Connor, who wrote a pamphlet named The Good Grey Poet; and Mr. John Burroughs, author of Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, published quite recently in New York. His thorough-paced admirers declare Whitman to be beyond rivalry the poet of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first, may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant, incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and form of his works.
Certain faults are charged against him, and, as far as they are true, shall frankly stand confessed—some of them as very serious faults. Firstly, he speaks on occasion of gross things in gross, crude, and plain terms. Secondly, he uses some words absurd or ill-constructed, others which produce a jarring effect in poetry, or indeed in any lofty literature. Thirdly, he sins from time to time by being obscure, fragmentary, and agglomerative—giving long strings of successive and detached items, not, however, devoid of a certain primitive effectiveness. Fourthly, his self- assertion is boundless; yet not always to be understood as strictly or merely personal to himself, but sometimes as vicarious, the poet speaking on behalf of all men, and every man and woman. These and any other faults appear most harshly on a cursory reading; Whitman is a poet who bears and needs to be read as a whole, and then the volume and torrent of his power carry the disfigurements along with it, and away.
The subject-matter of Whitman's poems, taken individually, is absolutely miscellaneous: he touches upon any and every subject. But he has prefixed to his last edition an "Inscription" in the following terms, showing that the key-words of the whole book are two—"One's-self" and "En Masse:"—
Small is the theme of the following chant, yet the greatest.—namely, ONE'S-SELF; that wondrous thing, a simple separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse: I say the form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male I sing. Nor cease at the theme of One's-self. I speak the word of the modern, the word EN MASSE. My days I sing, and the lands—with interstice I knew of hapless war. O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey linked