Birds and Poets : with Other Papers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 224 pages of information about Birds and Poets .

Birds and Poets : with Other Papers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 224 pages of information about Birds and Poets .

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:”—­

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Birds and Poets : with Other Papers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.