Complete Prose Works
poetic glints still more--put the soul in rapport with death, or toward
it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late "Crossing the Bar":
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The floods may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain of
Phrynichus long ago to one of old Athens' favorites:
Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age,
Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd,
He died; his many tragedies were fair,
And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.
Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, at
twilight--or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie or
on mountain road, for that matter--favor the right mood. Words are
difficult--even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads or
songs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous'd
so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the
after-realm, as no statement or sermon could--and brought it hovering
near. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a
physiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of it really
begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly shaped and
affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every thing from
that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here is something
(Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an opposite coloring:
I know the solemn monotone
Of waters calling unto me;
I know from whence the airs have blown,
That whisper of the Eternal Sea;
As low my fires of driftwood burn,
I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
And, fair in sunset light, discern
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.
Like an invisible breeze after a long and sultry day, death sometimes
sets in at last, soothingly and refreshingly, almost vitally. In not
a few cases the termination even appears to be a sort of ecstasy. Of
course there are painful deaths, but I do not believe such is at all the
general rule. Of the many hundreds I myself saw die in the fields and
hospitals during the secession war the cases of mark' d suffering or
agony _in extremis_ were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of
immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their
clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition are
blunted or even gone.)
Then to give the following, and cease before the thought gets
threadbare:
Now, land and life, finale, and farewell!
Now Voyager depart! (much, much for thee is yet in store;)
Often enough hast thou adventur'd o'er the seas,
Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
Duly again to port and hawser's tie returning.
--But now obey thy cherish'd, secret wish,
Embrace thy friends--leave all in order;
To port and hawser's tie no more returning,
Depart upon thy endless cruise, old Sailor!
SOME LAGGARDS YET
THE PERFECT HUMAN VOICE
Stating it briefly and pointedly I should suggest that the human voice
is a cultivation or form'd growth on a fair native foundation. This
foundation probably exists in nine cases out of ten. Sometimes nature
affords the vocal organ in perfection, or rather I would say near enough
to whet one's appreciation and appetite for a voice that might be truly
call'd perfection. To me the grand voice is mainly physiological--(by
which I by no means ignore the mental help, but wish to keep
the emphasis where it belongs.) Emerson says _manners_ form the
representative apex and final charm and captivation of humanity: but he
might as well have changed the typicality to voice.
Of course there is much taught and written about elocution, the best
reading, speaking, &c., but it finally settles down to _best_ human
vocalization. Beyond all other power and beauty, there is something in
the quality and power of the right voice (_timbre_ the schools call
it) that touches the soul, the abysms. It was not for nothing that
the Greeks depended, at their highest, on poetry's and wisdom's vocal
utterance by _tete-a-tete_ lectures--(indeed all the ancients did.)
Of celebrated people possessing this wonderful vocal power, patent to
me, in former days, I should specify the contralto Alboni, Elias Hicks,
Father Taylor, the tenor Bettini, Fanny Kemble, and the old actor Booth,
and in private life many cases, often women. I sometimes wonder whether
the best philosophy and poetry, or something like the best, after all
these centuries, perhaps waits to be rous'd out yet, or suggested, by
the perfect physiological human voice.
SHAKSPERE FOR AMERICA
Let me send you a supplementary word to that "view" of Shakspere
attributed to me, publish'd in your July number,[47] and so courteously
worded by the reviewer (thanks! dear friend.) But you have left out
what, perhaps, is the main point, as follows:
"Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all
he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for
the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual and
democratic, the sceptres of the future." (See pp. 55-58 in "November
Boughs," and also some of my further notions on Shakspere.)
The Old World (Europe and Asia) is the region of the poetry of concrete
and real things,--the past, the esthetic, palaces, etiquette, the
literature of war and love, the mythological gods, and the myths anyhow.
But the New World (America) is the region of the future, and its poetry
must be spiritual and democratic. Evolution is not the rule in Nature,
in Politics, and Inventions only, but in Verse. I know our age is
greatly materialistic, but it is greatly spiritual, too, and the future
will be, too. Even what we moderns have come to mean by _spirituality_
(while including what the Hebraic utterers, and mainly perhaps all the
Greek and other old typical poets, and also the later ones, meant) has
so expanded and color'd and vivified the comprehension of the term,
that it is quite a different one from the past. Then science, the final
critic of all, has the casting vote for future poetry.
Note:
[47] This bit was in "Poet-lore" monthly for September, 1890.
"UNASSAIL'D RENOWN"
The N. Y. _Critic_, Nov. 24, 1889, propounded a circular to several
persons, and giving the responses, says, "Walt Whitman's views [as
follow] are, naturally, more radical than those of any other contributor
to the discussion":
Briefly to answer impromptu your request of Oct. 19--the question
whether I think any American poet not now living deserves a place
among the thirteen "English inheritors of unassail'd renown" (Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Burns, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats,)--and which American poets would be
truly worthy, &c. Though to me the _deep_ of the matter goes down,
down beneath. I remember the London _Times_ at the time, in opportune,
profound and friendly articles on Bryant's and Longfellow's deaths,
spoke of the embarrassment, warping effect, and confusion on America
(her poets and poetic students) "coming in possession of a great
estate they had never lifted a hand to form or earn"; and the further
contingency of "the English language ever having annex'd to it a lot of
first-class Poetry that would be American, not European"--proving then
something precious over all, and beyond valuation. But perhaps that
is venturing outside the question. Of the thirteen British immortals
mention'd--after placing Shakspere on a sort of pre-eminence of fame not
to be invaded yet--the names of Bryant, Emerson, Whittier and Longfellow
(with even added names, sometimes Southerners, sometimes Western or
other writers of only one or two pieces,) deserve in my opinion an
equally high niche of renown as belongs to any on the dozen of that
glorious list.
INSCRIPTION FOR A LITTLE BOOK ON GIORDANO BRUNO
As America's mental courage (the thought comes to me to-day) is so
indebted, above all current lands and peoples, to the noble army of
Old-World martyrs past, how incumbent on us that we clear those martyrs'
lives and names, and hold them up for reverent admiration, as well
as beacons. And typical of this, and standing for it and all perhaps,
Giordano Bruno may well be put, to-day and to come, in our New World's
thankfulest heart and memory.
W.W. CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, _February 24th, 1890_.
SPLINTERS
While I stand in reverence before the fact of Humanity, the People, I
will confess, in writing my L. of G., the least consideration out of
all that has had to do with it has been the consideration of "the
public"--at any rate as it now exists. Strange as it may sound for
a democrat to say so, I am clear that no free and original and
lofty-soaring poem, or one ambitious of those achievements, can
possibly be fulfill'd by any writer who has largely in his thought _the
public_--or the question, What will establish'd literature--What will
the current authorities say about it?
As far as I have sought any, not the best laid out garden or parterre
has been my model--but Nature has been. I know that in a sense the
garden is nature too, but I had to choose--I could not give both.
Besides the gardens are well represented in poetry; while Nature (in
letter and in spirit, in the divine essence,) little if at all.
Certainly, (while I have not hit it by a long shot,) I have aim'd at the
most ambitious, the best--and sometimes feel to advance that aim (even
with all its arrogance) as the most redeeming part of my books. I have
never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectual palates--but if
I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibility in every soul for its
own true exercise! if I could only wield that lever!
Out from the well-tended concrete and the physical--and in them and from
them only--radiate the spiritual and heroic.
Undoubtedly many points belonging to this essay--perhaps of the
greatest necessity, fitness and importance to it--have been left out
or forgotten. But the amount of the whole matter--poems, preface and
everything--is merely to make one of those little punctures or eyelets
the actors possess in the theatre-curtains to look out upon "the
house"--one brief, honest, living glance.
HEALTH, (OLD STYLE)
In that condition the whole body is elevated to a state by others
unknown--inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid,
strong, yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, flickers out
of, and over, the face--a curious transparency beams in the eyes,
both in the iris and the white--the temper partakes also. Nothing that
happens--no event, rencontre, weather, &c--but it is confronted--nothing
but is subdued into sustenance--such is the marvellous transformation
from the old timorousness and the old process of causes and effects.
Sorrows and disappointments cease--there is no more borrowing trouble
in advance. A man realizes the venerable myth--he is a god walking the
earth, he sees new eligibilities, powers and beauties everywhere; he
himself has a new eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion
takes a previously unknown grace. Merely _to move_ is then a
happiness, a pleasure--to breathe, to see, is also. All the beforehand
gratifications, drink, spirits, coffee, grease, stimulants, mixtures,
late hours, luxuries, deeds of the night, seem as vexatious dreams, and
now the awakening;--many fall into their natural places, whole-some,
conveying diviner joys.
What I append--Health, old style--I have long treasur'd--found
originally in some scrap-book fifty years ago--a favorite of mine (but