234 BIRDS AND POETS 
higher forms of literature is to escape from the 
tyranny of the real into the freedom of the ideal; 
but what is the ideal unless ballasted and weighted 
with the real? All these poems have a lofty ideal 
background; the great laws and harmonies stretch 
unerringly above them, and give their vista and per- 
spective. It is because Whitman’s ideal is clothed 
with rank materiality, as the soul is clothed with 
the carnal body, that his poems beget such warmth 
and desire in the mind, and are the reservoirs of so 
much power. No one can feel more than I how 
absolutely necessary it is that the facts of nature and 
experience be born again in the heart of the bard, 
and receive the baptism of the true fire before they 
be counted poetical; and I have no trouble on this 
score with the author of “Leaves of Grass.” He 
never fails to ascend into spiritual meanings. In- 
deed, the spirituality of Walt Whitman is the chief 
fact after all, and dominates every page he has 
written. 
Observe that this singer and artist makes no 
direct attempt to be poetical, any more than he does 
to be melodious or rhythmical. He approaches these 
qualities and results as it were from beneath, and 
always indirectly; they are drawn to him, not he to 
them; and if they appear absent from his page at 
first, it is because we have been looking for them in 
the customary places on the outside, where he never 
puts them, and have not yet penetrated the interiors. 
As many of the fowls hide their eggs by a sort of 
intuitive prudery and secretiveness, he always half 
