A SALT BREEZE. 177 



And undertones of distant lion roar, 



(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear but now, rapport for 



once, 



A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) 

 The first and last confession of the globe, 

 Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, 

 The tale of cosmic elemental passion, 

 Thou tellest to a kindred soul." 



/Whitman is essentially of the shore ; his bearded, 

 aboriginal quality, something in his words that smite 

 and chafe, a tonic like salt-air, not sweet, but dilating ; 

 his irregular, flowing, repeating, elliptical lines ; his 

 sense of space and constant reference to the earth 

 and the orbs as standards and symbols. His poems 

 are rarely architectural or sculpturesque, either to the 

 eye or mind ; no carving and shaping for merely art's 

 sake ; but floating, drifting, surging masses of con- 

 crete events and images, more or less nebular, pro- 

 toplasmic, and preliminary, but always potent and 

 alive, and full of the salt of the earth, holding in so- 

 lution as no other poet does his times and country. 



\The sea is the great purifier and equalizer of 

 climes, the great canceler, leveler, distributer, neu- 

 tralizer, and sponge of oblivion. What a cemetery, 

 and yet what healing in its breath ! What a desert, 

 and yet what plenty in its depths ! How destructive, 

 and yet the continents are its handiwork. 



" Sea, full of food, the nourisher of kinds, 

 Purger of earth, and medicine of men." 



And yet famine and thirst, dismay and death, stalk 

 the wave. Contradictory, multitudinous sea ! the de- 



