(what we call poems being merely pictures)." The culture that he represents is not in the books: it is the training of the sensibilities through the discipline of contact with immediate reality. He substitutes life for a tradition; his gift is vital human intercourse now and here. What we may expect to find in Whitman, as we turn his pages, is an actual friend and comrade. His poetry is finally the communication of himself. By the medium of his verse, he shares his experience with us, making us partakers of it and of its fruits through imaginative sympathy.

The avenues of approach to Whitman are many. We may take him purely as a poet, luxuriating in the sheer beauty of his phrasing in numberless inspired passages. We may regard him in a more militant aspect, as the prophet of Democracy, the self-appointed bard of "these States," and interpreter to himself of the average man. His political and economic theoriz

ing, elaborated especially in his prose writings, though not of the orthodox schools, deserves consideration, as showing keen insight and a power of shrewd criticism. For some readers, the final significance of "Leaves of Grass" will consist in its philosophic doctrine, its treatment of the ultimate themes, - of God, of Being, of the purport of life, the mystery of death, the hope of immortality. But in general, I believe that Whitman has most for those who meet him at the outset as a man. The reading of Whitman is not merely æsthetic in its effect, an imaginative and emotional excitation, though it is that in part. Nor is it simply an intellectual exercise and a dim excursion into regions of abstraction. Whitman goes all the way round life. Our contact with him is contact with an actual human being in the flesh, and it is attended with practical consequences for our wayfaring through the world. Walt Whitman is a comrade for the journey.

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

In these lines Whitman defines his relation to the world and to experience. He is a lounger through life, acted upon rather than acting. His attitude is one of awe and wonder; the result is ecstasy. The universe for him is a procession; and he is a delighted though quiescent looker-on. As persons, objects, events move by, the throng of the streets, the play of human energies and occupations, the acting out of "God's calm annual drama,”

Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,

Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,

The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering

trees,

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The liliput countless armies of the grass,

The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes,

The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald

meadows,

The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products,—

little by little he is absorbed, taken up by them, and he becomes in himself the thing on which he looks. He identifies himself with all forms. The whole world for him is animate, instinct with feeling and big with purpose. He enters into the life of all kinds of men, he realizes in himself the conditions of every variety of human experience.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,

The courage of present times and all times,

How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and

down the storm,

How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,

And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;

How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up,

How he saved the drifting company at last,

How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves,

How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved men ;

All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,

I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there.

But it is not a question of human experience only. Every natural object is alive, plays its part, and implicates ultimate meanings.

You air that serves me with breath to speak!

You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!

You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!

You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the road

sides!

I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

In the manifold discrete objects of the external world Whitman finds the expression.