He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less....
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 farthest, he has the most faith.
He is no writer of “poems distilled from foreign poems”; he is the propounder of
the idea of free and perfect individuals,
For that idea the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.
In America, whose “veins are filled with poetical stuff,” Whitman was certain not only of the need for poets but of their ultimate power; for in America, the cradle of the race, and through the bards God’s will was to be done.
Whitman arrived at the acme of self-reliance. With the mystic’s sense of revealed truth at hand, and a devout conviction that it was the poet’s duty—his duty—to show men a new heaven and a new earth, he went on his way with perfect faith. Emerson wrote of self-reliance in general, “Adhere to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.” Yet he remonstrated with Whitman, and in the attempt to modify his extravagance used arguments which were unanswerable. Nevertheless, said the younger poet, “I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way”; in doing which he bettered Emerson’s instructions by disregarding his advice. Hostile or brutal criticism left him quite unruffled. It reënforced him in his conclusions and cheered him with the thought that they were receiving serious attention. After Swinburne’s fiercest attack says Burroughs: “I could not discover either in word or look that he was disturbed a particle by it. He spoke as kindly of Swinburne as ever. If he was pained at all, it was on Swinburne’s account and not on his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat upon himself as Swinburne had done.”