These States are the amplest poem,
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations,
Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,
Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars,
Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the soul loves,
Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.
One of the most magnificent of Whitman’s patriotic chants is that known by its opening line, ‘As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free.’ He would be a hardened sceptic who, after reading these superb and uplifting verses, found himself still unconverted to some portion of the gospel of poetry as preached by Walt Whitman. There is no resisting the man here, or when he shows his power in pieces like ‘Proud Music of the Storm,’ ‘Passage to India,’ ‘The Mystic Trumpeter,’ ‘With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!’ ‘To the Man-of-War-Bird,’ ‘Song of the Universal,’ and ‘Chanting the Square Deific.’
Admirable, even wonderful, as these verses are, it may be after all that the little volume called Drum-Taps (together with its Sequel) is Whitman’s best gift to the literature of his country. Vivid pictures of battle-field, camp, and hospital, they are not to be forgotten by him who has once looked on them. The ‘Prelude,’ ‘Cavalry Crossing a Ford,’ ‘By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame,’ ‘The Dresser,’ the impressive ‘Vigil strange I kept on the field one night,’ and the no less striking ‘A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,’ together with ‘As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods,’ the ‘Hymn of Dead Soldiers,’ and ‘Spirit whose Work is Done,’—these and many more have accomplished for Whitman’s reputation what the ‘Song of Myself’ and kindred poems could not.
In Drum-Taps appeared the tributes to Lincoln, ‘O Captain, my Captain,’ and the great lament beginning ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d.’ Here the poet rises to his supreme height. For pathos and tenderness, for beauty of phrase, nobility of thought, and a grand yet simple manner this threnody is indeed worthy of the praise bestowed on it by those critics whose praise is most to be desired.[72]