One seems to see those huge Brocken shadows of the past sinking and dropping below the horizon like mountain peaks, as he presses onward on his journey. Akin to this absorption of science is another quality in my poet not found in the rest, except perhaps a mere hint of it now and then in Lucretius,—a quality easier felt than described. It is a tidal wave of emotion running all through the poems, which is now and then crested with such passages as this:—
“I am he that walks with the tender and
growing night;
I call to the earth and sea, half held
by the night.
“Press close, bare-bosom’d night!
Press close, magnetic,
nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large,
few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer
night.
“Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath’d
earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of
the mountains, misty topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full
moon, just tinged with
blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the
tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter
and clearer for my
sake!
Far-swooping, elbow’d earth! rich,
apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!”
Professor Clifford calls it “cosmic emotion,”—a poetic thrill and rhapsody in contemplating the earth as a whole,—its chemistry and vitality, its bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability of its laws and principles to human, aesthetic, and art products. It affords the key to the theory of art upon which Whitman’s poems are projected, and accounts for what several critics call their sense of magnitude,—“something of the vastness of the succession of objects in Nature.”
“I swear there is no greatness or power
that does not emulate those
of the earth!
I swear there can be no theory of any
account, unless it corroborate
the theory of the earth!
No politics, art, religion, behavior,
or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with
the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality,
impartiality, rectitude
of the earth.”
Or again, in his “Laws for Creation:”—
“All must have reference to the ensemble
of the world, and the
compact truth of the
world,
There shall be no subject too pronounced—All
works shall illustrate
the divine law of indirections.”
Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet’s mind as his mightiest symbol,—his type of completeness and power. It is the armory from which he draws his most potent weapons. See, especially, “To the Sayers of Words,” “This Compost,” “The Song of the Open Road,” and “Pensive on her Dead gazing I heard the Mother of all.”
The poet holds essentially the same attitude toward cosmic humanity, well illustrated in “Salut au Monde:”—