FIELD AND STUDY 



"Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 

 Outward and outward and forever outward. 



"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." 



That is all good astronomy, and it is all good 

 poetry. 



Whitman's personality is always the dominant 

 fact. He assimilates and transmutes science as easily 

 as anything else. His tremendous egoism cannot be 

 obscured or thwarted. It enables him to identify 

 himself with all objects and persons without suffer- 

 ing the least embarrassment or degradation. While 

 other poets aim to write beautiful poems by selec- 

 tion and elaboration, Whitman aims to write poems 

 of power by including all and elaborating nothing. 

 While other poets seize upon some special phase of 

 Nature, and make much of that, Whitman gives 

 the spirit of Nature in her totality. Many persons 

 who are moved by a flower, a biro!, a sunset, or a 

 shell on the beach, are unmoved by the midnight 

 skies and the larger elemental displays. Vastness, 

 power, universality, are Whitman's characteristics 

 as a poet. While touching the highest point of mod- 

 ern knowledge and humanitarianism, on the one 

 hand, he reaches to the antique simplicity and reli- 

 gious fervor on the other. He is prophetic and crea- 

 tive, while he is Darwinian and democratic. His 

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