There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
Every object grows incorporate with the child, an essential inseparable part of him,—the early lilacs, the noisy brood of the barnyard, people, home, the family usages, doubts even (doubts ‘whether that which appears is so, or is it all flashes and specks?’), the streets, the shops, the crowd surging along, shadows and mist, and boats and waves,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.
The idea has another setting in ‘Salut au Monde,’ Walt Whitman’s brotherly wave of the hand to the whole world. It is a vision of kingdoms and nations, comprehensive, detailed; it is geography and the catalogue raised to the dignity of eloquence. Latitude and longitude and the hot equator ‘banding the bulge of the earth’ acquire new meaning in this strange chant. The poet hears the myriad sound of the life of all peoples:—
I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,