He says the best of life
"Is not what you anticipated—it is cheaper, easier, nearer,"
and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:—
"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 compares with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the earth."
No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with these and kindred passages:—
"The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot,
of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer,
(Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.)
······
"All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
"Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness,
Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems,
The sailor, the traveler, underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer,
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems;
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life,
and everything else.
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes;
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.
They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be contented and full,
Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again.
······
"Of these States the poet is the equable man,
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging
agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health, immortality, government,
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good as the engineer's, he can make every
word he speaks draw blood,
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
He is no arguer, he is judgment (nature accepts him absolutely),
He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and omen as dreams or dots.
······
"Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from other poems pass away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
Admirers, impostors, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature."
Folded up in these sentences, often many times folded up, is Whitman's idea of the poet, the begetter, the reconciler; not the priest of the beautiful, but the master of the All, who does not appear once in centuries.
We hear nothing of the popular conception of the poet, well reflected in these lines of Tennyson:—
"The poet in a golden clime was born, with golden stars above."
"Golden stars" and "golden climes" do not figure at all in Whitman's pages; the spirit of romance is sternly excluded.