sex poems a rank and healthy animality, and to make them as frank
as the shedding of pollen by the trees, strong even to the point of
offence." All we ask is for him to do so as a poet, not as a mere
physiologist. And when he speaks one moment as a physiologist, next as a
poet; at one time as a lover, at another as a showman, the result is not
inspiring. "He could not make it pleasing," remarks Mr. Burroughs, "a
sweet morsel to be rolled under the tongue; that would have been levity
and sin, as in Byron and the other poets . . . He would sooner be
bestial than Byronic, he would sooner shock by his frankness than inflame
by his suggestion." This vague linking together of "Byron and the other
poets" is not easy to understand. In the first place, not one of the
moderns has treated love from the same standpoint. Shelley, for
instance, is transcendental, Byron elemental, Tennyson sentimental;
Rossetti looks at the soul through the body, Browning regards the body
through the soul. There is abundant variety in the treatment. Then,
again, why Byron should be singled out especially for opprobrium I fail
to see, for love is to him the fierce elemental passion it is for
Whitman. As for frankness, the episode of Haidee and Don Juan does not
err on the side of reticence. Nor is it pruriently suggestive. It is a
splendid piece of poetic animalism. Let us be fair to Byron. His work
may in places be disfigured by an unworthy cynicism; his treatment of
sexual problems be marred by a shallow flippancy. But no poet had a
finer appreciation of the essential poetry of animalism than he, and much
of his cynicism, after all, is by way of protest against the same narrow
morality at which Whitman girds. To single Byron out as a poet
especially obnoxious in his treatment of love, and to condemn him so
sweepingly, seems to me scarcely defensible. To extol unreservedly the
rankness and coarseness of "The Children of Adam," and to have no word of
commendation, say, for so noble a piece of naturalism as the story of
Haidee, seems to me lacking in fairness. Besides, it suggests that the
_only_ treatment in literature of the sexual life is a coarse, unpleasing
treatment, which I do not suppose Mr. Burroughs really holds. Whitman
has vindicated, and vindicated finely, the inherent truth and beauty of
animalism. But so has William Morris, so has Dante Gabriel Rossetti, so
has poor flouted Byron. And I will go further, and say that thes