212 BIRDS AND POETS 
progress, and these are some of the fish, not all 
beautiful by any means, but all terribly alive, and 
all native to these waters. 
In the ‘Carol of Occupations” occur, too, those 
formidable inventories of the more heavy and coarse- 
grained trades and tools that few if any readers have 
been able to stand before, and that have given the 
scoffers and caricaturists their favorite weapons. If 
you detach a page of these and ask, “Is it poetry? 
have the ‘hog-hook,’ the ‘ killing-hammer,’ ‘ the 
cutter’s cleaver,’ ‘ the packer’s maul,’ etc., met with 
a change of heart, and been converted into celes- 
tial cutlery?” I answer, No, they are as barren of 
poetry as a desert of grass; but in their place in the 
poem, and in the collection, they serve as masses of 
shade or neutral color in pictures, or in nature or 
character, — a negative service, but still indispensa- 
ble. The point, the moral of the poem, is really 
backed up and driven home by this list. The poet 
is determined there shall be no mistake about it. 
He will not put in the dainty and pretty things 
merely, —he will put in the coarse and common 
things also, and he swells the list till even his robust 
muse begins to look uneasy. Remember, too, that 
Whitman declaredly writes the lyrics of America, of 
the masses, of democracy, and of the practical labor 
of mechanics, boatmen, and farmers: — 
“ The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you 
All PHONES all politics and civilization, exude from you; 
All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anye 
where, are tallied in you; 
