206 BIRDS AND POETS 
tion is invaluable. Well has it been said that the 
man or woman who has “Leaves of Grass” for a 
flaily companion will be under the constant, invisi- 
ble influence of sanity, cleanliness, strength, and a 
gradual severance from all that corrupts and makes 
morbid and mean. 
In regard to the unity and construction of the 
poems, the reader sooner or later discovers the true 
solution to be, that the dependence, cohesion, and 
final reconciliation of the whole are in the Person- 
ality of the poet himself. As in Shakespeare every- 
thing is strung upon the plot, the play, and loses 
when separated from it, so in this poet every line 
and sentence refers to and necessitates the Person- 
ality behind it, and derives its chief significance 
therefrom. In other words, “Leaves of Grass” is 
essentially a dramatic poem, a free representation of 
man in his relation to the outward world, — the 
play, the interchanges between him and it, apart 
from social and artificial considerations, —in which 
we discern the central purpose or thought to be for 
every man and woman his or her Individuality, and 
around that Nationality. To show rather than to 
tell, —to body forth as in a play how these arise. 
and blend; how the man is developed and recruited, 
his spirit’s descent; how he walks through materials 
absorbing and conquering them; how he confronts 
the immensities of time and space; where are the 
true sources of his power, the soul’s real riches, — 
that which ‘‘adheres and goes forward and is not 
dropped by death;” how he is all defined and pub- 
