This is an attempt, incomplete but fairly representative as to sources, to trace the changing view during half a century of Leaves of Grass and its author.
V
Sonnets and apostrophes in large number addressed to Walt Whitman during the later years of his life, and since his passing away, have appeared in fugitive form in widely separated sources. A selection of these may prove of interest by reason of the names attached, as well as because of the subject:
The good gray poet” gone! Brave hopeful Walt!
He might not be a singer without fault,
And his large rough-hewn rhythm did not chime
With dulcet daintiness of time and rhyme.
He was no neater than wide Nature’s wild,
More metrical than sea winds. Culture’s child,
Lapped in luxurious laws of line and lilt,
Shrank from him shuddering, who was roughly built
As cyclopean temples. Yet there rang
True music through his rhapsodies, as he sang
Of brotherhood, and freedom, love and hope,
With strong, wide sympathy which dared to cope
With all life’s phases, and call nought unclean.
Whilst hearts are generous, and whilst woods are green,
He shall find hearers, who in a slack time
Of puny bards and pessimistic rhyme,
Dared to bid men adventure and rejoice.
His “yawp barbaric” was a human voice;
The singer was a man. America
Is poorer by a stalwart soul today,
And may feel pride that she hath given birth
To this stout laureate of old Mother Earth.
—Punch
Good-bye, Walt!
Good-bye from all you loved of Earth—
Rock, tree, dumb creature, man and woman—
To you their comrade human.
The last assault
Ends now, and now in some great world has birth
A minstrel, whose strong soul finds broader wings,
More brave imaginings.
Stars crown the hill-top where your dust shall lie,
Even as we say good-bye,
Good-bye, old Walt!
—Edmund Clarence Stedman
H e was in love with truth and knew her near—
Her comrade, not her suppliant on the knee:
She gave him wild melodious words to be
Made music that should haunt the atmosphere.
She drew him to her bosom, day-long dear,
And pointed to the stars and to the sea,
And taught him miracles and mystery,
And made him master of the rounded year.
Yet one gift did she keep. He looked in vain,
Brow-shaded, through the darkness of the mist,
Marking a beauty like a wandering breath
That beckoned, yet denied his soul a tryst:
He sang a passion, yet he saw not plain
Till kind earth held him and he spake with death.
—Harrison S. Morris