IV. The Eternal Self

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it is sure, alive, sufficient.

Whitman is a rationalist in complete degree. Authority appeals to him not at all. He is unconscious that there is a "thus saith" anywhere in heaven above or earth beneath. And yet his assurance of personal immortality is so absolute that he announces the tenets of this faith with the oracular dictum of prophet and priest.

He does not presume to specify and analyze the details of future existence. He does not mark off corner lots in the new Jerusalem and guarantee the lay of land. He contents himself with general principles which yet cover all that is essentially of worth.

Life is always seen by him with death at its side; but not as a ghastly skeleton-always as a promise and a benediction. Death to him. means infinite potency-the guarantee of eternal meaning for all the events and realities of earth.

I do not know what follows the death of my body,
But I know that whatever it is, it is best for me,
And I know well that whatever is really me shall live
just as much as before.

In the light of the somber coloring always given to death in the thought of the generations, it is startling to note how Whitman draws its figure in the most brilliant colors and in his most sunny pictures.

In "A Song of Joys" he sings a pean to "the beautiful touch of death" between a carol to the trees and another to the delights of the" splash in the water" and the "race along the shore."

In the exquisite stanzas beginning "Splendor of the falling day, floating and filling me," in which he carols to the sun and "throbs to the brain and beauty of the earth" he rejoices "in the superb vistas of death." In another, celebrating fruitage, he first of all pays homage to "death (the life greater)," and lets follow upon it "seeds dropping into the groundbirth."

To turn from death as it is found in general literature to the death everywhere present in Whitman's poems is like facing suddenly westward at the time of sunset glory after having accustomed one's eyes to the pensive shades of the eastward heavens.

This triumphant assurance is not based upon All of life, all of growth,

elaborate arguments.

all of mystery, all of meaning, is an argument to him. If others cannot find it in these he cannot convince.

I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven,

O suns! O grass of graves! O perpetual transfers and promotions.

If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?

The assurance within him is inexpressible; no dictionary utterance or symbol can give it voice, but

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on. To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes

me.

Do you see, O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death—it is form — union, plan —
It is eternal life—it is happiness.

If one confronts Whitman with the difficulties attendant upon immortality, asserting that life apart from the physical body is hard to understand and mysterious, he answers with the inexplicable mystery of life. Life is mystical, but it is real. Surely death may lead to reality quite as well. There is joy and purport in life in spite of mystery and miracle; shall there not be equal joy and purport in death?

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal, as every one is

immortal?

I know it is wonderful-but

Come! I should like to hear you tell me what there is in
yourself that is not just as wonderful.

And I should like to hear the name of anything between
First-Day morning and Seventh-Day night

That is not just as wonderful.

To him the unthinkable thing would be that man could have come into being with all the marvelous, mighty past incarnated in his nature, capable of living in all, enjoying all, entering into the vast eternal stretch of things, and then be snuffed out just when he is beginning to give out the infinite potency within him.

No one who appreciates the human soul, as we have previously seen that Whitman does, could fail to have unlimited confidence in its permanence and eternal meaning.

To him, immortality is never the misty, ocean-absorbed conception of many who have been nursed upon eastern nirvana or western conservation of energy notions.

Eternal life to Whitman is the vigorous personal existence of a clear-cut identity.

You are not thrown to the winds - you gather certainly and safely around yourself,

Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever!

ゾー