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arch-angel and watching him as he places now on one side of the balance, now on the other, the many hopes of man.

"In one scale I saw him place
All the glories of our race,
Cups that lit Belshazzar's feast,
Gems, the lightning of the East,
Kublai's sceptre, Cæsar's sword,
Many a poet's golden word,
Many a skill of science, vain
To make men as gods again.

"In the other scale he threw
Things regardless, outcast, few,
Martyr-ash, arena-sand,

Of St. Francis' cord a strand,
Beechen cups of men whose need
Fasted that the poor might feed,
Disillusions and despairs

Of young saints with grief-grayed hairs,
Broken hearts that brake for Man."

To the clear-eyed Lowell there was no question of what the choice of man should be. Yet confident as he was of the truth of his vision, he did not fail to see how often his weaker brethren hesitated to press onward in the rugged and forbidding paths of duty when the fields of pleasure spread out invitingly before them. To such he frequently addressed himself, urgently exhorting them to lay hold upon the things which endure forever. At times indeed he spoke almost as one having authority and not as the scribes and Pharisees. Certainly the mandate which stands at the close

of the noble lines entitled Prometheus are hardly less than scriptural in tone and import.

"Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems,
Having two faces, as some images

Are carved, of foolish gods; one face is ill;
But one heart lies beneath, and that is good,
As are all hearts when we explore their depths.
Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type
Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain

Would win men back to strength and peace through love,

Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart

Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears lifelong

With vulture beak; yet the high soul is left;

And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love,
And patience which at last shall overcome."

IX

WALT WHITMAN

Whitman has not yet been given his final place among American poets. That he is to have a permanent position there ceased to be doubted as soon as it was discovered over half a century ago, that he could not be either wholly rejected or completely ignored. From the moment he wrote among his many introductory inscriptions to Leaves of Grass the challenging words:

"Shut not your doors to me proud libraries;

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring,"

he pressed unflinchingly forward, and long before his death succeeded in firmly establishing himself within walls which had only reluctantly admitted him. Nevertheless, he still presents a problem. What is to be done with a singer whose voice cannot be brought to accord with others in the choir? Where among those who are most carefully selective of subject matter and most pains-taking in expression, shall we place a self-professed singer who is quite indifferent to the long accepted rules of taste bounding the poet's field of thought and limiting the poet's choice of diction? Where indeed shall such a writer be assigned, that he may

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not detract from the impression which his fellowpoets rightly make, and to be just that he may not himself suffer through comparison with them? Many an attempt has been made at meeting such questions as these in connection with Whitman; none, as yet, has been successful more than moderately. When it is said that Whitman never wrote a single poetic line, the critic is reduced to silence by the citation of the beautiful phrase in Come up from the Fields, Father,

"Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd vines;"

or by the quotation of that stately passage in Song of the Exposition,

"Blazon'd with Shakspere's purple page,

And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme."

When, on the other hand, one grows enthusiastic over the nobility, the uplift of Whitman's message, he is forced to an apologetic attitude at the mention of poems marred in their thought by coarse passion, in their expression by repulsive words. The truth probably lies somewhere in the midst of these diverse criticisms. The fact of the matter is that the final test to which Whitman must eventually be subjected has not yet been devised, — if, indeed, it ever can be. Weighed in the balance which adequately serves to determine the true worth of other American poets, he simply breaks the scales. Some new method of evaluating him

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must therefore be found; and until it is foundperhaps even after it is found he will remain unique in American Literature, some will have it, in all literature.

Wordsworth's dictum, that the poet must himself create the taste by which he is judged, is illuminating at this point. It proved true in his case; it afterwards proved no less true in Tennyson's and Browning's. Why may it not prove true in Whitman's? Certainly the Camden Sage was only recasting — probably quite unconsciously the thought of the English poet, when he wrote,

"I make the only growth by which I can be appreciated."

Whatever general appreciation may be accorded Whitman, he offers to the hasty reader but a barren outlook from the religious point of view. At first glance, indeed, he seems to promise far less in that direction than did Poe, although no one can deny that the sweep of his horizon line is much greater than that which hemmed in the author of The Raven. Furthermore, one will almost surely be warned away by at least two classes of persons among Whitman's admirers, those who object to an interpreter and those who object to any attempt at interpretation. The former will support themselves by quoting from Myself and Mine,

"I charge you, forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself,

I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free;

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