548 BEYIEWS — LEAVES OF QEA.8S. 



most lamentable of failures, or the most glorious of triumphs, in the 

 known history of literature. " 



Assuredly, the Brooklyn poet is no commonplace writer. That he 

 is startling and outre, no one who opens his volume will doubt. The 

 conventionalities, and proprieties, and modesties, of thought, as well 

 as of language, hold him in no restraint ; and hence he has a vantage 

 ground from which he may claim such credit as its licence deserves. 

 But, apart from this, there are unmistakeable freshness, originality, 

 and true poetic gleams of thought, mingled with the strange incoher- 

 encies of his boastful rhapsody. To call his " Leaves" poems, would 

 be a mistake ; they resemble rather the poet's first jottiugs, out of 

 which the poem is to be formed ; the ore out of which the metal is to 

 be smelted ; and, in its present form, with more of dross than sterling 

 metal in the mass. 



To find an extractable passage is no easy task. Here a fine sug- 

 gestive fancy ends in some offensive pruriency ; there it dwines into 

 incomprehensible aggregations of words and terms, which— unless 

 Machiavelli was right in teaching that words were given us to con- 

 ceal our thoughts, — are mere clotted nonsense ! Were we disposed 

 to ridicule : our selections would be easy enough ; or gravely to cen- 

 sure : abundant justification is at hand. We rather cull — not with- 

 out needful omissions— the thoughts that seem to have suggested the 

 quaint title of " Leaves of Grass. " 



" Loafe with me on the grass loose the stop from your throat, 



Not words, not music or rhyme I want : not custom or lecture, not even the best, 

 Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. 



I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own, 



And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, 



And that all the men ever born are also my brothers. . . .and the women 



my sisters and lovers, 

 And that a kelson of the Creation is love; 

 And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields. 

 A child said, what is the Grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 

 How could I answer the child ? ... .1 do not know what it is auy more than he. 

 I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green 



stuff woven. 

 Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 

 A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, 

 Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners, that we may see and 



remark, and say Whose ? 

 Or I guess the grass is itself a child . . .the produced babe of the vegetation. 

 Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 

 And it means, Sprouting, alike iu broad zones aud narrow zones, 



