Burroughs is also responsible for the suggestion that Whitman burst into full glory at one bound, and his work from the first line is Mature. At the age of thirty-five, a great change came over the man and his habits were different thereafter. His first poem, "Starting from Paumanook," outlines his work, observes Burroughs, and he fulfills every promise made.
"I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great Masters,
Now, if eligible, O that the great Masters might return and study me!
The Soul:
Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than water ebbs and flows.
I will mate the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems—
And I will mate the poems of my body and mortality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my Soul, and of immortality."
And so he did. As perfect as the last or any part of his work is the first. But the poet is true to himself and to the great undertaking.
In what particular qualities does Whitman differ from the other poets? Especially the poets who conform to the traditions of the past.
"When Tennyson sends out a poem," observes Burroughs, "it is perfect, like an apple or a peach; slowly wrought out and dismissed, it drops from his boughs, holding a conception or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. It is completed, distinct and separate—might be his, or might be any man's. It carries his quality, but it is a thing of itself, and centers and depends upon itself. Whether or not the world will hereafter consent, as in the past, to call only beautiful creations of this sort, poems, remains to be seen. But this is certainly not what Walt Whitman does, or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes no poems apart from himself. His lines or pulsations, thrills, waves of force, indefinite dynamic, formless, constantly emanating from the living centre, and they carry the quality of the Author's personal presence with them in a way that is unprecedented in literature."
The more I read Whitman the more I am drawn to him, and feel the greatness of the man. His poems have meant to me recently, what Emerson's Essays meant to me as a younger man. In about the same way they affect me now, only my love for the poems grows with each reading.
It is well to recall that so much was John Burroughs inspired by his early contact with Whitman that his first book was, Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, which was printed in 1867. A little later, in 1877, he renewed his study of the poet, in his last essay in Birds and Poets. The title of the essay is "The Flight of the Eagle," and is one of Burroughs' best papers. Still later, in about 1895, he wrote his final word on Whitman, in his volume, Whitman: A Study. This last volume is a complete interpretation of the poet. The poems of the man are given full treatment, and it is perhaps the best defense of Whitman in print.
The publishers of these books have long expected to get John Burroughs to write a biography of Whitman, but his many other literary activities, have combined to banish their hopes, and in his stead, Mr. Bliss Perry, in 1905, was asked to write the biography, which was published in 1906.
In recent years, Whitman has been gaining pretty general acceptance, and most of the papers in current literature expose his merits. His enemies are growing fewer and fewer, and those who still survive are not so bold. They are on the defensive instead of the offensive. He is such a potent factor in the present day literature of America, that our only conclusion is that he is with us to stay, and the sooner we learn to 'Walk the open road' with him, the better will we be prepared for the future critic of American literature.