226 BIRDS AND POETS 
I think I have blown with you, O winds; 
O waters, I have finger’d every shore with you.” 
Indeed, the whole book is leavened with vehe. 
ment Comradeship. Not only in the relations of 
individuals to each other shall loving good-will exist 
and be cultivated,— not only between the different 
towns and cities, and all the States of this indissolu- 
ble, compacted Union,— but it shall make a tie of 
fraternity and fusion holding all the races and peo- 
ples and countries of the whole earth. 
Then the National question. As Whitman’s com- 
pleted works now stand, in their two volumes, it is 
certain they could only have grown out of the Se- 
cession War; and they will probably go to future 
ages as in literature the most characteristic identi- 
fication of that war, — risen from and portraying it, 
representing its sea of passions and progresses, par- 
taking of all its fierce movements and perturbed 
emotions, and yet sinking the mere military parts of 
that war, great as those were, below and with mat- 
ters far greater, deeper, more human, more expand- 
ing, and more enduring. 
I must not close this paper without some refer- 
ence to Walt Whitman’s prose writings, which are 
scarcely less important than his poems. Never has 
Patriotism, never has the antique Love of Coun- 
try, with even doubled passion and strength, been 
more fully expressed than in these contributions. 
They comprise two thin volumes, — now included in 
“Two Rivulets, ” — called ‘‘ Democratic Vistas ” and 
“ Memoranda during the War;” the former exhibit- 
