THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 207 



lished and made certain through his body ; the value 

 of health and physique; the great solvent, Sympa- 

 thy, — to show the need of larger and fresher types 

 in art and in life, and then how the state is com- 

 pacted, and how the democratic idea is ample and 

 composite, and cannot fail us, — to show all this, I 

 say, not as in a lecture or critique, but suggestively 

 and inf erentially, — to work it out freely and pic- 

 turesquely, with endless variations, with person and 

 picture and parable and adventure, is the lesson and 

 object of "Leaves of Grass." From the first line, 

 where the poet says, 



"I loafe and invite my Sonl," 

 to the last, all is movement and fusion, — all is 

 clothed in flesh and blood. The scene changes, the 

 curtain rises and falls, but the theme is still Man, — 

 his opportunities, his relations, his past, his future, 

 his sex, his pride in himself, his omnivorousness, 

 his "great hands," his yearning heart, his seething 

 brain, the abysmal depths that underlie him and 

 open from him, etc., all illustrated in the poet's own 

 character. Himself is the chief actor always. His 

 personality directly facing you, and with its eye 

 steadily upon you, runs through every page, spans 

 all the details, and rounds and completes them, and 

 compactly holds them. This gives the form and the 

 art conception, and gives homogeneousness. 



When Tennyson sends out a poem, it is perfect, 

 like an apple or a peach; slowly wrought out and 

 dismissed, it drops from his boughs holding a con- 

 ception or an idea that spheres it and makes it whole. 



