Milton knew all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth.  His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does not understand and not understanding does not like.  He was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice.  He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other sons of men.  He met all on terms of absolute equality, mixing with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the cultured, the rich—­simply as brother with brother.  And when he said to an outcast, “Not till the sun excludes you will I exclude you,” he voiced a sentiment worthy of a god.

He was brother to the elements, the mountains, the seas, the clouds, the sky.  He loved them all and partook of them all in his large, free, unselfish, untrammeled nature.  His heart knew no limits, and feeling his feet mortised in granite and his footsteps tenoned in infinity he knew the amplitude of time.

Only the great are generous; only the strong are forgiving.  Like Lot’s wife, most poets look back over their shoulders; and those who are not looking backward insist that we shall look into the future, and the vast majority of the whole scribbling rabble accept the precept, “Man never is, but always to be blest.”

We grieve for childhood’s happy days, and long for sweet rest in Heaven and sigh for mansions in the skies.  And the people about us seem so indifferent, and our friends so lukewarm; and really no one understands us, and our environment queers our budding spirituality, and the frost of jealousy nips our aspirations:  “O Paradise, O Paradise, the world is growing old; who would not be at rest and free where love is never cold.”  So sing the fearsome dyspeptics of the stylus.  O anemic he, you bloodless she, nipping at crackers, sipping at tea, why not consider that, although evolutionists tell us where we came from, and theologians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing we are really sure of is that we are here!

The present is the perpetually moving spot where history ends and prophecy begins.  It is our only possession:  the past we reach through lapsing memory, halting recollection, hearsay and belief; we pierce the future by wistful faith or anxious hope; but the present is beneath our feet.

Whitman sings the beauty and the glory of the present.  He rebukes our groans and sighs—­bids us look about on every side at the wonders of creation, and at the miracles within our grasp.  He lifts us up, restores us to our own, introduces us to man and to Nature, and thus infuses into us courage, manly pride, self-reliance, and the strong faith that comes when we feel our kinship with God.