FIELD AND STUDY 



The purely academic mind akrays gets the im- 

 pression of uncouthness from Whitman, and, if 

 there are not native and original gifts back of the 

 academic veneer, as there were in Symonds, gets 

 no farther. 



You may refuse to call Whitman's work poetry, 

 but it is not prose. His attitude toward his subject 

 and toward his reader is not that of the prose- writer. 

 It is more intimate and personal, more symbolical 

 and representative. It is that of the bard and 

 prophet, if not of the poet. The prose-writer is bent 

 on elucidation, argumentation, description, or the 

 conveyance of knowledge. Whitman's aim is none of 

 these. The personality of the man is immanent in 

 all Whitman's best work; he gives himself. His spirit 

 is creative, primary, elemental. He identifies himself 

 with men and things, and they speak through him 

 instead of his standing apart from them and merely 

 portraying them or contemplating them or singing 

 of them. The poets quicken one's pulse by their 

 fine descriptions and imaginary touches. Whitman 

 speaks in the spirit of Nature as a* whole; not beauty 

 merely is his aim, but love, power. 



§ 

 I return to Wordsworth again and again, year 

 after year. His privacies with Nature, his commun- 

 ing with his own soul, through her shows and ob- 

 jects, appeal to me. This modern devout feeling 

 toward Nature, as distinguished! from the ancient 

 2-2S 



