"Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! . . .
Far-swooping, elbowed earth! rich, apple-blossomed earth."
Indeed, Whitman's most popular poem, My Captain, written after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, differs little in form from ordinary verse, as a stanza of it will show:
"My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won.
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck, my captain lies
Fallen, cold and dead."
This is from Drum Taps, a volume of poems of the civil war. Whitman has also written prose having much the same quality as his poetry: Democratic Vistas, Memoranda of the Civil War, and, more recently, Specimen Days. His residence of late years has been at Camden, New Jersey, where a centennial edition of his writings was published in 1876.
1. William Cullen Bryant. Thanatopsis. To a Water-fowl. Green River. Hymn to the North Star. A Forest Hymn. "O Fairest of the Rural Maids." June. The Death of the Flowers. The Evening Wind. The Battle-Field. The Planting of the Apple-tree. The Flood of Years.
2. John Greenleaf Whittier. Cassandra Southwick. The New Wife and the Old. The Virginia Slave Mother. Randolph of Roanoke. Barclay of Ury. The Witch of Wenham. Skipper Ireson's Ride. Marguerite. Maud Muller. Telling the Bees. My Playmate. Barbara Frietchie. Ichabod. Laus Deo. Snow-Bound.
3. Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven. The Bells. Israfel. Ulalume. To Helen. The City in the Sea. Annabel Lee. To One in Paradise. The Sleeper. The Valley of Unrest. The Fall of the House of Usher. Ligeia. William Wilson. The Cask of Amontillado. The Assignation. The Masque of the Red Death. Narrative of A. Gordon Pym.
4. N. P. Willis. Select Prose Writings. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886.
5. Mrs. H. B. Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Oldtown Folks.
6. W. G. Simms, The Partisan. The Yemassee.