on sang in delectable verse the swan-song of an overripe
civilization. It was for him to voice the democratic spirit, to show it
full-grown, athletic, haughtily taking possession of the world and
redistributing the prizes according to its own standards. It was for him
to sow broadcast over the land the germs of larger, more sane, more robust
types of men and women, indicating them in himself.

In him the new spirit of democracy first completely knows itself, is proud
of itself, has faith and joy in itself, is fearless, tolerant, religious,
aggressive, triumphant, and bestows itself lavishly upon all sides. It is
tentative, doubtful, hesitating no longer. It is at ease in the world, it
takes possession, it fears no rival, it advances with confident step.

No man was ever more truly fathered by what is formative and expansive in
his country and times than was Whitman. Not by the literature of his
country was he begotten, but by the spirit that lies back of all, and
that begat America itself,--the America that Europe loves and fears, that
she comes to this country to see, and looks expectantly, but for the most
part vainly, in our books to find.

It seems to me he is distinctly a continental type. His sense of space, of
magnitude, his processional pages, his unloosedness, his wide horizons,
his vanishing boundaries,--always something unconfined and unconfinable,
always the deferring and undemonstrable. The bad as well as the good
traits of his country and his people are doubtless implied by his work.

If he does not finally escape from our unripe Americanism, if he does not
rise through it all and clarify it and turn it to ideal uses, draw out the
spiritual meanings, then avaunt! we want nothing of him.

"The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell.
The former I graft and increase upon myself,
The latter I translate into a new tongue."

The vital and the formative the true poet always engrafts and increases
upon himself, and thence upon his reader; the crude, the local, the
accidental, he translates into a new tongue. It has been urged against
Whitman that he expresses our unripe Americanism only, but serious readers
of him know better than that. He is easy master of it all, and knows when
his foot is upon solid ground. It seems to me that in him we see for the
first time spiritual and ideal meanings and values in democracy and the
modern; we see them translated into character; we see them tried b