Spring plants her rosy feet on their dim homesThey sleep.-Sweet Summer comes and calls, and calls, With all her passionate poetry of flowers Majestical the mournful sagas learned. Far in the melancholy North, where God Here Avarice shall forget his den of gold, The little lake, set in a paradise Of wood, shall be a mirror to the moon Shall lift some stately dirge he loves to breathe On every hill, and look like spirits there And all that we call glorious, are its dower. Oh ye whose mouldering frames were brought and placed By pious hands within these flowery slopes And gentle hills, where are ye dwelling now? The soul Lives in the body as the sunbeam lives In trees or flowers that were but clay without. Or where pale Neptune in the distant space Of bright beatitude: or do ye know Aught of dull space or time, and its dark load They answer not. But He whose love created them of old, To cheer his solitary realm and reign, With love will still remember them. WALT WHITMAN. [Born on 31st May 1819, at West Hills, Long Island, in the State of New York. If I may trust my own judgment, by far the greatest of American poets,-the most national, and the most worldwide. Mr. Whitman has acted as a printer, a school-teacher, a newspaper-writer, a carpenter and builder, and is now a clerk in the office of the Attorney General at Washington. During the Civil War he volunteered to attend on the sick and wounded of both armies; and is said to have ministered, with boundless brotherliness and eminent success, to upwards of 100,000 men. In earlier years he had travelled much within the area of the United States. His poems are Leaves of Grass, published in 1855, and since reissued more than once with alterations and additions,1-and Drum-Taps, published in 1865. The Leaves of Grass, more especially, has encountered the usual fate of works of the heroic stature: unmeasured abuse from the many, and from the knowing-enthusiastic cherishing from a few, gradually growing less few]. A SONG. COME, I will make the continent indissoluble; shone upon; I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks; By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme! For you! for you, I am trilling these songs, In the love of comrades, In the high-towering love of comrades. 1 In the latest edition of Leaves of Grass there is a separate section named Passage to India. My extracts are taken from, and in all points of diction correspond with, this latest edition. EN V Y. WHEN I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house; But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them, How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful, they were, Then I am pensive-I hastily walk away, filled with the bitterest envy. PARTING FRIENDS. WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record? The battle-ship, perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-day under full sail? The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of the night that envelops me? Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?—No; But I record of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier, in the midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends; The one to remain hung on the other's neck, and passionately kissed him, While the one to depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms. SALUT AU MONDE! I. OH take my hand, Walt Whitman ! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! What widens within you, Walt Whitman ? What waves and soils exuding? What climes? what persons and lands are here? Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering? What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these? What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists? What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers? 2. Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens; Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east-America is provided for in the west; Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator, Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends; Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels in slanting rings it does not set for months; Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks again; Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes, groups, Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands. 3. What do you hear, Walt Whitman? I hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife sing ing; |