“He most honors my style
Who learns under it to destroy the teacher.”
Hovey’s own nature was so individual that he rarely failed to destroy the teacher, or he was perhaps unconscious of having one; but in the opening lines of the ode in question the Whitman note is unmistakable:
I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.
I have need of the sky.
I have business with the grass.
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling,
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
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