CHAPTER VI WORKS AND DAYS 1877-1878 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. WORDSWORTH MR. BURROUGHS used to say that he had often thought of writing an essay and calling it, after Hesiod, 'Works and Days.' Those quiet early years at Riverby, in which he was steadfastly pursuing his work, yet attentively regarding the face of each new day, and pensively watching it fade into oblivion, fall naturally under this comprehensive title. His work was henceforth to profit incalculably through this fruition of hopes held for twenty years - a home in the country, with interests that rooted him to the soil, yet gave leisure for writing. The work of those years lives, and, when one reads the record of his days, one feels that the days themselves live also. He reverenced each day. Closely he scanned each onea concrete piece of time rescued from the ocean of eternity. None was like another; none an object of indifference. Each was new every morning, fresh every evening. As with Emerson, the spectacle of the day was, in truth, a new speech of God to him. Sketches of his days, culled from the Journal, picture his work as well. During 1877 there were many little ripples in the mental and emotional life at Riverby. The bank-examining went on, also the fruit-growing, and magazine-writing. There were brief jaunts from home, occasional visits from relatives and friends, deep joys and heavy sorrows; and there was the publication of his fourth book, 'Birds and Poets.' While the title of this book was under consideration, there came the following suggestion from Whitman: I think 'Birds and Poets' not only much the best name for the book, but a first rate good name-appropriate, original, and fresh, without being at all affected or strained. The piece you put fourth should be first, should lead the book, giving it its title, and having the name of the piece changed to 'Birds and Poets' [instead of 'The Birds of the Poets'] which, I think, would be an improvement. The whole collection would be sufficiently homogeneous (and it were a fault to be too much so) you just want a hint for the name of the book - Only it must be in the spirit of the book, and not too much so either Nature and Genius' is too Emersony altogether. Some of his difficulties as an author are mentioned in this entry: I find it quite impossible to make my pump hold water from one day to the next. I write away today and am very full of my theme, and the stream of ideas flows freely; but if I am broken off for a few hours, or lose a night's sleep, I am nearly dry again, and must pump and pump next day a long time to bring the column up again; and often have to prime a little by reading a page or two of some virile author. To Richard Watson Gilder,' in late January, he sends this heart-warming bit of appreciation: I think you go up head in this number of the Old Cabinet. If you go on writing in this way you will have to be looked after. Most of your things have a permanent value as literature, and you will soon have to begin to sort them out and put them in a volume. Your point always has a good ample basis—it is never the result of an accidental or momentary angle of vision, like that which makes a jewel of a dew-drop; it is a jewel from any point of view. I like especially the hint from Shakespeare, and the remarks on the typical quality of great art. You also say just the right thing about Boyesen, and about the other superfine story writers. You have very marked one precious quality that is so rare among our younger writers - an honest, sincere, inquiring attitude of mind. You are not thinking to show off your parts, but are ready to be nothing for the sake of what you have to say.... After a ten years' lull in writing about Whitman, Burroughs had been set going again by some editorials (mentioned in the foregoing chapter) in the New York 'Tribune.' The last one' had provoked his rejoinder of April 13, 1876 ('Walt Whitman's Poetry'), which the poet marveled that the 'Tribune' printed, characterizing it as 'an artillery and bayonet charge combined.' Warming to the task, Burroughs later wrote 'The Flight of the Eagle,' which he hurried off to Philadelphia for Whitman's criticism and approval, as the Journal entry, February 17th, shows: The letters to Gilder are kindly lent by Miss Rosamond Gilder. ''American versus English Criticism,' April 12, 1876. Returned yesterday from Philadelphia where I spent the night of the 15th with Walt at Mrs. Gilchrist's. Never saw Walt look so handsome so new and fresh. His new, light gray clothes, his white beard and hair, and his rosy, god-like, yet infantile face, all combined to make a rare picture. After ten o'clock we went up to his room and sat and talked till near one o'clock. I wanted him to say how he liked my piece on him, but he did not say. We talked about it, what had best go in, and what were best left out, but he was provokingly silent about [its] merits. Speaking of his poems, he said it was a very audacious and risky thing he had done, and the wonder was, not that they made their way so slowly, but that they had got any foot-hold at all. When the conditions were all considered, and the want of anything like matured and robust æsthetic perception in this country remembered, it was a great success to have effected a lodgment at all. It is a feast to me to look at Walt's face it is incomparably the grandest face I ever saw such sweetness and harmony, and such strength strength like the Roman arches and pieces. If that is not the face of a poet, then it is the face of a god. None of his pictures do it half justice.' The original manuscript of 'The Flight of the Eagle' shows emendations in Whitman's handwriting, doubtless those referred to in the foregoing entry. One sees the poet's hand supplying, deleting, and altering words, phrases, and sentences. Besides the passage (pages 197-98, 'Birds and Poets') to which Burroughs refers in a letter to E. H. A., quoted in Chapter IV, as having been written by Whitman, as well as those seen in the accompanying illustration (a facsimile of parts of the manuscript), the most noteworthy passages contributed in whole, or in part, by Whitman, are here transcribed: In fact, the main clue to Walt Whitman's life and personality, and the expression of them in his poems, is to be found in about the largest emotional element that has appeared anywhere. This, if not controlled by a potent rational balance, would either have tossed him helplessly forever, or wrecked him as disastrously as ever storm and gale drove ship to ruin. These volcanic emotional fires appear everywhere in his books; and it is really these, aroused to intense activity and unnatural strain during the four years of the War, and his persistent labors in the hospitals, that have resulted in his illness and paralysis since. In Brooklyn, at the Whitman Centenary Celebration, he said of a painting by Walters: 'It gives Walt's benevolent look, but not his powerful, elemental look. It makes him out rather soft - like a sort of Benjamin Franklin.' 13 iwelcome any bidance to the ཀ་༣.་འོ་༼},་་་་ evidence that & counteracting agencies an at work, as mu unspectable precios, I its not know where thes widene is frmished in such ample measure as in the pages of Walt Whitman. I The pouch is fully setite of in hing however they to get bear tulif that ar in abayence. or restricted to other Chounds, there is still pop & fecundity depote of virgin ovil in the race iufficient to produce a suan of the largest tiffe, & the monk andacem ་ nature force & atherings, Amer PAGE OF MANUSCRIPT OF 'THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE' WITH |