Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.
It is impossible, as all critics agree, to compass Whitman in a book or essay or compress him into a summary. He was an immensely expansive personality whose writings are as broad as life itself. It is almost equally impossible for one who has really read over and through and under his poems to speak of him in measured terms. The world is coming round to Whitman much faster than he expected. Every great step in human progress is a step in the direction he was pointing. His larger faith, whether so recognized or not, is yearly the faith of more and more thinking people. And in an immediate way his influence on the generation of living poets is incomparably great.
BOOK LIST
Individual Author
Walt Whitman. Works. Selections from the prose and poetry of Whitman. O. L. Triggs, editor. 1902. 10 vols. The best single volumes are Leaves of Grass, Complete Poetical Works, and Complete Prose Works. (Small, Maynard.) 1897 and 1898. During Whitman’s lifetime ten successive enlarged editions of Leaves of Grass were published: in 1855, 1856, 1860, 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881 (Boston), 1881 (Philadelphia), 1888, 1889, 1891. Other titles are as follows: *Drum-Taps, 1865; *Passage to India, 1871; *Democratic Vistas, 1871; Memoranda during the War, 1875; Specimen Days and Collect, 1882, 1883; Two Rivulets, 1876; *November Boughs, 1888; *Good-bye, My Fancy, 1891. (Titles with the mark * were included as new sections in the next forthcoming edition of Leaves of Grass.)
Bibliographies
Selections from Whitman. O. L. Triggs, editor. 1898.
Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, Vol. VIII, pp. 129–153. C. W. Moulton, editor. 1905. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 551–581.