march confessing defeat but a pilgrimage chanting victory. And it was in this, never in a dejected, spirit, that we assembled at Whitman's grave. We had desired to escape all attitudinizing. No rote of church, no chemistry of criticism, would have harmonized with a life so optimistically and so impulsively charged. The words addressed to Whitman's death by the several friends who were chosen to speak were, therefore, free of all amalgams on the one hand of ecclesiastical, and on the other of philosophic, despair. And the scripture of the occasion was drawn from all sources with relevant resolution.

Whitman often repeated an old remark of his own: "If I regret anything it is perhaps that I have not said enough for the criminals and the outcasts.' When asked what he thought he had done by living he replied: "I think I have got a foothold on which honestly to die." Traubel, just a couple of days before Whitman's death, plied him in this way: "Your books are not the Walt Whitman who will die tomorrow. They are the Walt Whitman who will live eternally." To which Whitman himself added: "You are right-they are that or they are nothing; and they are by the same sign not the John Smith or any other fellow who will die but the John Smith who is doomed to go on eternally and live."

Leaves of Grass at Whitman's death had paid all its debts to criticism and wiped off most of its scores

with tradition. It had got away from the simply diatribal aspects of its controversies. Whitman was only modestly confident when he said: "We came to measure a few sights and sounds ourselves and I think our measurements will keep." It is often announced with a precipitate sniff of victory that though Whitman wrote for the people the people have refused to hear him. Even if that was wholly true it would not dispose of Whitman. The prophet's vogue does not chance at the first curbstone. In an unpublished letter we find Emerson referring to Whitman as "the people's darling and their champion." Whitman did not die feeling that he was understood, but he died confident that he was to be heard. He felt that his message was fundamental,- that its meanings came out of the deepest backgrounds of history: that it was, perhaps, so far the most pregnant revelation from the god in man to itself. This colossal supposition was relieved of all stain of egotism by Whitman's abstractions of its claims from his single personality. He delivered the message in his own name. But any other name would have served as well. He felt that gravitation was utilizing him. And while he was proud enough to make preposterous demands he was humble enough to dissipate these demands in a universal benefaction. He was not distressed because any present half democracies failed to connect with him. He saw democracies die in democracy. And he knew that, whatever happened to

democracies, democracy would know its own face in

the glass.

RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE.

THOMAS B. HARNED.

HORACE L. TRAUBEL.

September 1, 1902.

Inscriptions

One's-Self 1 Sing.

ONE'S-SELF I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

As 1 Ponder'd in Silence.

As I ponder'd in silence,

Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,

Terrible in beauty, age, and power,

The genius of poets of old lands,

As to me directing like flame its eyes,

With finger pointing to many immortal songs,

And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so, then I answer'd,

I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one

than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and

retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field

the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers.

In Cabin'd Sbips at Sea.

IN cabin'd ships at sea,

The boundless blue on every side expanding,

With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious

waves,

Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,

She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or

under many a star at night,