(The Return of the Heroes.)
It may be doubted whether any other poet who has been inspired by outdoor Nature, has approximated so closely as Whitman to the "shows of all variety," which nature presents,—from the infinite gradations of microscopic detail, to the enormous range and sweep of dim vastitudes. His poetry has a huge elemental quality, akin to that of winds and clouds and seas. "To speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside,"—this was the standard he had set himself: and, in pursuance of this ideal, he had given his first and most typically unconventional volume the title "Leaves of Grass." No name could better convey and sum up his meaning in art,—a commixture of the minute and the universal, the simple and the inexplicable, the particular and the all-pervading,—the commonplace which is also the miracle: for to Whitman leaves of grass were this and more. "To me," he declared, "as I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass,"
Every hour of the light and dark is a miracle—
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
the grass-blades no less so than the "gentle soft-born measureless light." And, avowedly, from these external expressions of nature he derived all power of song—
I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven—
O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions,—
If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?
Thus he had arrived at declaring, with august arrogance: "Let others finish specimens—I never finish specimens: I shower them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern continually."
Nor are you to suppose that this was a late development of nature-worship in a man suddenly confronted with teeming glories and wonderments. All through his life he had been soaking himself in the mysterious loveliness of the world around. "Even as a boy," he wrote, "I had the fancy, the wish, to write a poem about the seashore—that suggesting dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid—that curious, lurking something (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is.... I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward ... it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, the seashore should be an invisible influence, a pervading gauge and tally for me in my composition." Even as a child, upon the desolate beaches of Long Island, he had, "leaving his bed, wandered alone, bare-headed, barefoot," over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, and explored the secret sources of tragedy that are hidden at the roots of love.
Once Paumanok,
When the snows had melted—when the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Up this seashore, in some briers,
Two guests from Alabama—two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
Till of a sudden,
May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest,
Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appear'd again.