mystical illumination
regarding the unity and blessedness of the universe, an insight passing
understanding, but based upon the revelatory experience of love. In the
light of this experience, all created things are recognized as divine.
The starting-point and center of the Whitman world is the individual
man, the "strong person," imperturbable in mind, athletic in body,
unconquerable, and immortal. Such individuals meet in comradeship, and
pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded
because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America
for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger
over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not
a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting
freely on the open road, to his conception of "these States." One of his
typical visions of the breadth and depth and height of America will
be found in "By Blue Ontario's Shore." In this and in many similar
rhapsodies Whitman holds obstinately to what may be termed the three
points of his national creed. The first is the newness of America, and
its expression is in his well-known chant of "Pioneers, O Pioneers." Yet
this new America is subtly related to the past; and in Whitman's later
poems, such as "Passage to India," the spiritual kinship of orient and
occident is emphasized. The second article of the creed is the unity of
America. Here he voices the conceptions of Hamilton, Clay, Webster, and
Lincoln. In spite of all diversity in external aspects the republic
is "one and indivisible." This unity, in Whitman's view, was cemented
forever by the issue of the Civil War. Lincoln, the "Captain," dies
indeed on the deck of the "victor ship," but the ship comes into the
harbor "with object won." Third and finally, Whitman insists upon the
solidarity of America with all countries of the globe. Particularly in
his yearning and thoughtful old age, the poet perceived that humanity
has but one heart and that it should have but one will. No American
poet has ever prophesied so directly and powerfully concerning the final
issue involved in that World War which he did not live to see.

Whitman, like Poe, had defects of character and defects of art. His life
and work raise many problems which will long continue to fascinate and
to baffle the critics. But after all of them have had their say, it will
remain true that he was a seer and a prophet, far in adva