times, the triumphs of science and the
industrial age. He is the poet of mass and multitude. In his pages things
are grouped and on the run, as it were. Little detail, little or no
elaboration, little or no development of a theme, no minute studied
effects so dear to the poets, but glimpses, suggestions, rapid surveys,
sweeping movements, processions of objects, vista, vastness,--everywhere
the effect of a man overlooking great spaces and calling off the
significant and interesting points. He never stops to paint; he is
contented to suggest. His "Leaves" are a rapid, joyous survey of the
forces and objects of the universe, first with reference to character and
personality, and next with reference to America and democracy. His method
of treatment is wholesale and accumulative. It is typified by this passage
in his first poem:--

"Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.

"I tramp a perpetual journey,
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the
woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner table, library, or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public
road."

He deals with the major elements of life, and always aims at large
effects. "Lover of populous pavements," he is occupied with large thoughts
and images, with races, eras, multitudes, processions. His salute is to
the world. He keeps the whole geography of his country and of the globe
before him; his purpose in his poems spans the whole modern world. He
views life as from some eminence from which many shades and differences
disappear. He sees things in mass. Many of our cherished conventions
disappear from his point of view. He sees the fundamental and necessary
things. His vision is sweeping and final. He tries himself by the orbs.
His standards of poetry and art are astronomic. He sees his own likeness
in the earth. His rapture springs, not so much from the contemplation of
bits and parts as from the contemplation of the whole. There is a breadth
of sympathy and of interest that does not mind particulars. He says:--

"It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever and ever, w