welcome them also),
But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women.

"Not to chisel ornaments,
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme
Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking."

His whole work is a radiation from an exemplification of the idea that
there is something better than to be an artist or a poet,--namely, to be a
man. The poet's rapture springs not merely from the contemplation of the
beautiful and the artistic, but from the contemplation of the whole; from
the contemplation of democracy, the common people, workingmen, soldiers,
sailors, his own body, death, sex, manly love, occupations, and the force
and vitality of things. We are to look for the clews to him in the open
air and in natural products, rather than in the traditional art forms and
methods. He declares he will never again mention love or death inside of a
house, and that he will translate himself only to those who privately stay
with him in the open air.

"If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore;
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key:
The maul, the oar, the handsaw, second my words.

"No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.

"The young mechanic is closest to me--he knows me pretty well.
The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with
him all day;
The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my
voice:
In vessels that sail, my words sail--I go with fishermen and seamen,
and love them.

"My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
blanket;
The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where
they are:
They and all would resume what I have told them."

VI

So far as literature is a luxury, and for the cultured, privileged few,
its interests are not in Whitman; so far as poetry represents the weakness
of man rather than his strength; so far as it expresses a shrinking from
reality and a refuge in sentimentalism; so far as it is aristocratic as in
Tennyson, or mocking and rebellious as in Byron, or erotic and mephitic as
in Swinburne, or regretful and reminiscent as in Arnold, or a melodious
baying of