196 BIRDS AND POETS 
prose-writer never can, nor one whose form is essen- 
tially prose, ike Whitman’s. 
I, too, love to see the forms worthily used, as 
they always are by the master; and I have no ex- 
pectation that they are going out of fashion right 
away. A great deal of poetry that serves, and helps 
sweeten one’s cup, would be impossible without 
them, — would be nothing when separated from them. 
It is for the ear and the sense of tune, and of care- 
fully carved and modeled forms, and is not meant 
to arouse the soul with the taste of power, and to 
start off on journeys for itself. But the great in- 
spired utterances, like the Bible, — what would they 
gain by being cast in the moulds of metrical verse ? 
In all that concerns art, viewed from any high 
standpoint, — proportion, continence, self-control, 
unfaltering adherence to natural standards, subordi- 
nation of parts, perfect adjustment of the means to 
the end, obedience to inward law, no trifling, no 
levity, no straining after effect, impartially attend- 
ing to the back and loins as well as to the head, and 
even holding toward his subject an attitude of per- 
fect acceptance and equality, — principles of art to 
which alone the great spirits are amenable, —in 
all these respects, I say, this poet is as true as an 
orb in astronomy. 
To his literary expression pitched on scales of such 
unprecedented breadth and loftiness, the contrast of 
his personal life comes in with a foil of curious 
homeliness and simplicity. Perhaps never before 
has the absolute and average commonness of hu< 
