Complete Prose Works
solid gains, and did well for himself and for his family, and completed
a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits
these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has
higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives
a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the
prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and
harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for
burial-money, and of a few clap-boards around and shingles overhead on a
lot of American soil own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the year's
plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment
of such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of years of
money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all
their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of
parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of
the bloom and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and
of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or
have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and
desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naivety,
(even if you have achiev'd a secure 10,000 a year, or election to
Congress or the Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death
without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization
and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization
undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it
spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the
soul.
Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The
prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'd life
appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little and large
alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for
immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or
seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming
back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents,
and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look, in every
direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all
else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is
of consequence. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be
anything else' than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument
to hand or no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or
divide is in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black,
legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the
windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female
does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit
to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the
whole scope of it forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers
at last the craving and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits
no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or
judgment day, divides not the living from the dead, or the righteous
from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every
thought or act by its correlative, and knows no possible forgiveness or
deputed atonement.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If
he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
tides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him is not
open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations
and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of
time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness
in the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of
life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall
be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour,
and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge
in the general run, and wait his development.
Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The
prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or
performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does
it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of
genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens
and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right
hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after
he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman
think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and
complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a
man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or
woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last
under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and
realize, and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest
poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease.
The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he
takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously
unattain'd--thenceforward is no rest--they see the space and ineffable
sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there
shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the
younger and shows him how--they two shall launch off fearlessly together
till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the
lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and
shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend
immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the
exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America,
and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race
who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of
political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted
the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues.
It is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect of common
sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of
all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith,
self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude,
prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall wellnigh
express the inexpressible.
No great literature, nor any like style of behavior or oratory, or
social intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions,
or the treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail,
or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts,
or police or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can long
elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether
or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live
interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart, after that which
passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country?
Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the
ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud,
beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown
fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea for use to me to-day
here? I know that what answers for me, an American, in Texas, Ohio,
Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part
of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for the nursing of the young of
the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples
of the breasts of the Mother of Many Children?
America prepares with Composure and good-will for the visitors that have
sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome.
The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the
erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their
work. The soul of the nation also does its work. It rejects none, it
permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An
individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make
a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest
nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets.
PREFACE, 1872 To As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free Now Thou Mother with
thy Equal Brood, _in permanent edition_.
The impetus and ideas urging me, for some years past, to an utterance,
or attempt at utterance, of New World songs, and an epic of Democracy,
having already had their publish'd expression, as well as I can expect
to give it, in "Leaves of Grass," the present and any future pieces from
me are really but the surplusage forming after that volume, or the wake
eddying behind it. I fulfill'd in that an imperious conviction, and the
commands of my nature as total and irresistible as those which make
the sea flow, or the globe revolve. But of this supplementary volume,
I confess I am not so certain. Having from early manhood abandon'd the
business pursuits and applications usual in my time and country, and
obediently yielded myself up ever since to the impetus mention'd, and
to the work of expressing those ideas, it may be that mere habit has got
dominion of me, when there is no real need of saying anything further.
But what is life but an experiment? and mortality but an exercise? with
reference to results beyond. And so shall my poems be. If incomplete
here, and superfluous there, _n' importe_--the earnest trial and
persistent exploration shall at least be mine, and other success failing
shall be success enough. I have been more anxious, anyhow, to suggest
the songs of vital endeavor and manly evolution, and furnish something
for races of outdoor athletes, than to make perfect rhymes, or reign
in the parlors. I ventur'd from the beginning my own way, taking
chances--and would keep on venturing.
I will therefore not conceal from any persons, known or unknown to me,
who take an interest in the matter, that I have the ambition of devoting
yet a few years to poetic composition. The mighty present age! To absorb
and express in poetry, anything of it--of its world--America--cities and
States--the years, the events of our Nineteeth century--the rapidity
of movement--the violent contrasts, fluctuations of light and shade,
of hope and fear--the entire revolution made by science in the poetic
method--these great new underlying facts and new ideas rushing and
spreading everywhere;--truly a mighty age! As if in some colossal drama,
acted again like those of old under the open sun, the Nations of our
time, and all the characteristics of Civilization, seem hurrying,
stalking across, flitting from wing to wing, gathering, closing up,
toward some long-prepared, most tremendous denouement. Not to conclude
the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil and happiness and
sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd from oldest, worst
incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternal play anew, and
under happier, freer auspices. To me, the United States are important
because in this colossal drama they are unquestionably designated for