192 BIRDS AND POETS 



And went where he sat on a log, and led him in, and assured 



him, 

 And brought water and fiU'd a tub for his sweated body and 



bruis'd feet, 

 And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him 



some coarse clean clothes ; 

 And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awk- 

 wardness. 

 And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and 



ankles : 

 He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and 



pass'd North; 

 (I had him sit next me at table — my firelock lean'd in the 



corner.) " 



But of the liook as a -whole I could form no ade- 

 quate conception, and it was not till many years, 

 and after I had known the poet himself, as already 

 stated, that I saw in it a teeming, rushing globe 

 well worthy my best days and strength to surround 

 and comprehend. 



One thing that early took me in the poems was 

 (as before alluded to) the tremendous personal force 

 back of them, and felt through them as the sun 

 through vapor; not merely intellectual grasp or push, 

 but a warm, breathing, towering, magnetic Presence 

 that there was no escape from. 



Another fact I was quick to perceive, namely, 

 that this man had almost in excess a quality in which 

 every current poet was lacking, — I mean the faculty 

 of being in entire sympathy with actual nature, and 

 the objects and shows of nature, and of rude, abys- 

 mal man; and appalling directness of utterance 

 therefrom, at first hand, without any intermediate 

 agency or modification. 



