208 BIRDS AND POETS 



It is completed, distinct, and separate, — might be 

 his, or might be any man's. It carries his quality, 

 but it is a thing of itself, and centres and depends 

 upon itself. Whether or not the world will here- 

 after consent, as in the past, to call only beautiful 

 creations of this sort poems, remains to be seen. 

 But this is certainly not what Walt Whitman does, 

 or aims to do, except in a few cases. He completes 

 no poems apart and separate from himself, and his 

 pages abound in hints to that effect : — 



"Let others finish specimens — I never finish specimens; 

 I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and 

 modern continually." 



His lines are pulsations, thriUs, waves of force, 

 indefinite dynamics, formless, constantly emanating 

 from the living centre, and they carry the quality of 

 the author's personal presence with them in a way 

 that is unprecedented in literature. 



Occasionally there is a poem or a short piece that 

 detaches itself, and assumes something like ejacula- 

 tory and statuesque proportion, as "0 Captain, my 

 Captain," "Pioneers," "Beat, Beat, Drums," and 

 others in " Drum-taps ; " but all the great poems, 

 like "Walt Whitman," "Song of the Open Eoad," 

 "Crossing Brooklyn Eerry," "To Working Men," 

 "Sleep-chasings," etc., are out-flamings, out-rush- 

 ings of the pent fires of the poet's soul. The first- 

 named poem, which is the seething, dazzling sun of 

 his subsequent poetic system, shoots in rapid suc- 

 cession waves of almost consuming energy. It is 

 indeed a central orb of fiercest light and heat, swept 



