A SALT BREEZE 161 



Whitman is essentially of the shore ; his bearded, 

 aboriginal quality, — something in his words that 

 smites and chafes, 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 

 merely for art's sake; but floating, drifting, surging 

 masses of concrete events and images, more or less 

 nebular, protoplasmic, and preliminary, but always 

 potent and alive, and full of the salt of the earth, 

 holding in solution 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- 

 tralize^ 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 destruc- 

 tive, and yet the continents are its handiwork. 



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

 Purgerof earth, and medicine of men." 



And yet famine and thirst, dismay and death, 

 stalk the wave. Contradictory, multitudinous sea! 

 the despoiler and yet the renewer; barren as a rock, 

 yet as fruitful as a field ; old as Time, and young 

 as to-day; merciless as Fate, and tender as Love; 

 the fountain of all waters, yet mocking its victims 

 with the most horrible thirst; smiting like a ham- 

 mer, and caressing like a lady's palm; falling upon 

 the shore like a wall of rock, then creeping up the 



