194 BIRDS AND POETS 



called Whitman's want of art, or his violation of 

 art. I saw that he at once designedly swept away 

 all which the said critics have commonly meant by 

 that term. The dominant impression was of the 

 living presence and voice. He would have no cur- 

 tains, he said, not the finest, between himself and 

 his reader; and in thus bringing me face to face 

 with his subject I perceived he not only did not 

 escape conventional art, but I perceived an enlarged, 

 enfranchised art in this very abnegation of art. 

 "When half-gods go, whole gods arrive." It was 

 obvious to me that the new style gained more than 

 it lost, and that in this fullest operatic launching 

 forth of the voice, though it sounded strangely at 

 first, and required the ear to get used to it, there 

 might be quite as much science, and a good deal 

 more power, than in the tuneful but constricted 

 measures we were accustomed to. 



To the eye the page of the new poet presented 

 about the same contrast with the page of the popu- 

 lar poets that trees and the free, unbidden growths 

 of nature do with a carefully clipped hedge; and to 

 the spirit the contrast was about, the same. The 

 hedge is the more studiedly and obviously beauti- 

 ful, but, ah! there is a kind of beauty and satisfac- 

 tion in trees that one would not care to lose. There 

 are symmetry and proportion in the sonnet, but to 

 me there is something I would not exchange for 

 them in the wild swing and balance of many free 

 and unrhymed passages in Shakespeare; like the 

 one, for instance, in which these lines occur : — 



