ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



Whitman's standards are always those of Nature 

 and of life. Emerson hung his verses in the wind — a 

 good thing to get the chaff out of poetry or wheat. 

 Whitman brings his, and all art, to the test of the 

 natural, universal standards. He read his songs in 

 the open air to bring them to the test of real things; 

 he emulated the pride of the level he planted his 

 house by. Always is his eye on the orbs, and on the 

 earth as a whole: 



"I feel the globe itself swift swimming through space. 

 I will confront the shows of day and night, 

 I will see if I am to be less real than they are." 



He would have his songs tally "earth's soil, trees, 

 winds, waves." 



"Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?" 



he demands of those who would create the art of 

 America. 



His poems abound in natural images and objects, 

 but there is rarely a trace of the method and spirit 

 of the so-called nature poets, some of whom bedeck 

 Nature with jewelry and finery till we do not know 

 her. 



In one of his nature jottings, written in 1878 at 

 his country retreat not far from Camden, New Jer- 

 sey, he speaks thus of the emotional aspects and in- 

 fluences of Nature: 



I too, like the rest, feel these modern tendencies (from 

 all the prevailing intellections, literature, and poems) to 

 turn everything to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfac- 



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