THE POET OF THE COSMOS 



My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels. 

 He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, 

 And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside 

 them." 



Again he says: 



" It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so 

 exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt, or 

 the untruth of a single second." 



He is filled with "the great thoughts of space and 

 eternity," and common things assume new mean- 

 ings in his eyes: 



"Hie abstracted and hear the meanings of things and the reason 



of things. 

 They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen." 



Who before Whitman ever drew his poetic, his 

 aesthetic, and ethical standards from the earth, 

 from the sexuality, from the impartiality of the 

 earth, or his laws for creations from the earth? Only 

 the wisest readers are prepared for their unliterary 

 flavor: 



"I swear there can be no greatness or power that does not emu- 

 late those of the earth. 



There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborates the 

 theory of the earth. 



No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, 

 unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, 



Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of 

 the earth." 



We all see in Whitman, as we see in Nature, what 

 we bring the means of seeing. Readers of him are 



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