ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



clad in gray, with a fresh, florid complexion, large, 

 broad, soft hands, blue-gray eyes, gray-haired and 

 gray-bearded. He was fond of children and old peo- 

 ple. What a contrast were his placid and easy-going 

 ways to the astronomic sweep and power of his 

 poems, his spirit darting its solar rays to the utmost 

 bounds of the universe. When I was with him I did 

 not feel his mighty intellect, I felt most his human- 

 ity, his primitive sympathy, the depth and inten- 

 sity of his new democratic character, perhaps also 

 that in him which led Thoreau to say that he sug 

 gested something a little more than human. 



Whitman's attitude toward Nature stands out in 

 contrast to that of all other poets, ancient or mod- 

 ern. It was not that of the poet who draws his 

 themes from Nature, or makes much of the gentler 

 and fairer forms of wood and field, spring and sum- 

 mer, shore and mountain, as has been so largely the 

 custom of poets from Virgil down. Take all the Na- 

 ture lyrics and idyls out of English and American 

 poetry, and how have you impoverished it, how 

 many names would suffer ! Nor does Whitman's at- 

 titude in any degree conform to the worshipful atti- 

 tude of Wordsworth and so many other poets since 

 his time. He did not humanize Nature or read 

 himself into it; he did not adorn it as a divinity; 

 he did not see through it as through a veil to spirit- 

 ual realities beyond, as Emerson so often does; 

 he did not gather bouquets, nor distill the wild per- 



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