226 BIRDS AND POETS 



I think I have blown with you, O winds; 



O waters, I have finger'd every shore with you." 



Indeed, the whole book is leavened with vehe- 

 ment Comradeship. Not only in the relations of 

 individuals to each other shall loving good-wiU exist 

 and be cultivated, — not only between the different 

 towns and cities, and all the States of this indissolu- 

 ble, compacted Union, — but it shall make a tie of 

 fraternity and fusion holding all the races and peoi 

 pies and countries of the whole earth. 



Then the National question. As Whitman's com- 

 pleted works now stand, in their two volumes, it is 

 certain they could only have grown out of the Se- 

 cession War; and they will probably go to future 

 ages as in literature the most characteristic identi- 

 fication of that war, — risen from and portraying it, 

 representing its sea of passions and progresses, par- 

 taking of all its fierce movements and perturbed 

 emotions, and yet sinking the mere military parts of 

 that war, great as those were, below and with mat- 

 ters far greater, deeper, more human, more expand- 

 ing, and more enduring. 



I must not close this paper without some refer- 

 ence to Walt Whitman's prose writings, which are 

 scarcely less important than his poems. Never has 

 Patriotism, never has the antique Love of Coun- 

 try, with even doubled passion and strength, been 

 more fully expressed than in these contributions. 

 They comprise two thin volumes, — now included in 

 " Two Rivulets, " — called " Democratic Vistas " and 

 "Memoranda during the War; " the former exhibit- 



