208 BIRDS AND POETS 
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 centres and depends 
upon itself. Whether or not the world will here- 
after 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 and separate from himself, and his 
pages abound in hints to that effect: — 
“Let others finish specimens —I never finish specimens; 
I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and 
modern continually.’’ 
His lines are pulsations, thrills, waves of force, 
indefinite dynamics, 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. 
Occasionally there is a poem or a short piece that 
detaches itself, and assumes something like ejacula- 
tory and statuesque proportion, as “‘O Captain, my 
Captain,” ‘‘ Pioneers,” ‘‘ Beat, Beat, Drums,” and 
others in ‘“Drum-taps;” but all the great poems, 
like ‘Walt Whitman,” ‘Song of the Open Road,” 
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” ‘“‘To Working Men,” 
“‘Sleep-chasings,” etc., are out-flamings, out-rush- 
ings of the pent fires of the poet’s soul. The first- 
named poem, which is the seething, dazzling sun of 
his subsequent poetic system, shoots in rapid suc- 
cession waves of almost consuming energy. It is 
indeed a central orb of fiercest light and heat, swept 
