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Light rare untellable, lighting the very light,
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages;

For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my

knees,

Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.

V

TO YOU

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

HE open road to which Whitman

Tbeckons has brought us along devi

ous ways. Through evil and through good, in victory balanced by defeat, we have attended the great companion with mingled faith and questionings. Obscured by distorting shadows, he has seemed to elude us, only to emerge again into strange and splendid light. But this towering gray figure, with the scars of the years upon him, radiant with assured majesty, inspires confidence; and we have trusted him, though we are not sure we quite understand him. Manifestly, there is no single formula

for Whitman. As the measureless tangled undergrowth has parted to reveal the heights of vision and achievement, so Whitman's own nature is compounded of violent contrasts. At moments he is grossly physical in his assertion of the natural man; but it is equally evident that the essential fibre of his being is spiritual. "Muscle and pluck forever!" he cries; but the same stanza ends with the line, "Nothing endures but personal qualities." He believes in "the flesh and the appetites"; and yet the central reality of the whole universe for him is the soul. His arrogance among all assaults upon his personality is perfectly matched by his humility of spirit in the presence of God's manifestations of His mysterious way. Absolutely unconstrained and inconsiderate in his irresistible onward movement through experience, he is mastered by a tenderness that passes the love of woman. His acute consciousness of himself and of his original relation

to things betrays him into a pose; but to know Whitman at all is to be convinced of his entire singleness of purpose and his immense sincerity. In this counterplay of contradictory forces, one fact is unmistakable. For better or worse, Whitman is a tremendous, incalculable power. Impinging on the character of his reader with a persuasive pressure that is not to be gainsaid, he leaves no one passive or indifferent. It is impossible to confront this titanic energy without submitting, for the moment at least, to its positiveness and inherent authority. The reader may wrest himself free, to be the more confirmed in his own manner of life. It cannot be helped. Whitman is content merely to affirm himself, just as he is, without embellishment or disguise. It is enough for him to live his life as it is apportioned him, to follow where the way leads. Lest there be any misunderstanding in the matter, if you are the new person drawn to him, he gives

you

fair warning, before you attempt him further, that he is not what you supposed, but far different. Defining thus the probable terms of his companionship, he offers himself freely. But the choice remains open. The issue of the encounter he commits imperatively and unreservedly to you.

For himself, Whitman asks only to be tested by experience. His appeal is to life direct. That vivid immediacy which characterizes his own contact with the world he communicates in his poetry now across all distance instantly to you. A big, concrete, living personality flashes from out the printed page. Whitman is not professionally a poet.

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,

Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,

For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. This is not the voice of some idle singer of an empty day. Here speaks a man in

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