And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil’d Death,
    And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
    Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
    Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
    Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and ways,
    I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death.”

The last playing youngster had silently disappeared from the streets.  The doorsteps were deserted—­save where across the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, conversing in low monotone.

The clouds had drifted away.

A great, yellow star shone out above the chimney-tops in the East.

I arose to go.

“I wish you’d come oftener—­I see you so seldom, lad,” said the old man, half-plaintively.

I did not explain that we had never met before—­that I had come from New York purposely to see him.  He thought he knew me.  And so he did—­as much as I could impart.  The rest was irrelevant.  As to my occupation or name, what booted it!—­he had no curiosity concerning me.  I grasped his outstretched hand in both of my own.

He said not a word; neither did I.

I turned and made my way to the ferry—­past the whispering lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where the noisy engines puffed.  As I walked on board the boat, the wind blew up cool and fresh from the West.  The star in the East grew brighter, and other stars came out, reflecting themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware.

There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that came echoing over the waters.  My heart was very full, for I had felt the thrill of being in the presence of a great and loving soul.

It was the first time and the last that I ever saw Walt Whitman.

* * * * *

A good many writers bear no message:  they carry no torch.  Sometimes they excite wonder, or they amuse and divert—­divert us from our work.  To be diverted to a certain degree may be well, but there is a point where earth ends and cloud-land begins, and even great poets occasionally befog the things they would reveal.

Homer was seemingly blind to much simple truth; Vergil carries you away from earth; Horace was undone without his Maecenas; Dante makes you an exile; Shakespeare was singularly silent concerning the doubts, difficulties and common lives of common people; Byron’s corsair life does not help you in your toil, and in his fight with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers we crave neutrality; to be caught in the meshes of Pope’s “Dunciad” is not pleasant; and Lowell’s “Fable for Critics” is only another “Dunciad.”  But above all other poets who have ever lived, the author of “Leaves of Grass” was the poet of humanity.