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One seems to see those huge Brocken shadows of the past sinking and dropping below the horizon like mountain peaks, as he presses onward on his journey. Akin to this absorption of science is another quality in my poet not found in the rest, except perhaps a mere hint of it now and then in Lucretius,–a quality easier felt than described. It is a tidal wave of emotion running all through the poems, which is now and then crested with such passages as this:–

“I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea, half held by the night.

“Press close, bare-bosom’d night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.

“Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping, elbow’d earth! rich, apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!”

Professor Clifford calls it “cosmic emotion,”–a poetic thrill and rhapsody in contemplating the earth as a whole,–its chemistry and vitality, its bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability of its laws and principles to human, aesthetic, and art products. It affords the key to the theory of art upon which Whitman’s poems are projected, and accounts for what several critics call their sense of magnitude,–“something of the vastness of the succession of objects in Nature.”

“I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth!
I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the earth!
No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth.”

Or again, in his “Laws for Creation:”–

“All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world,
There shall be no subject too pronounced–All works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections.”

Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet’s mind as his mightiest symbol,–his type of completeness and power. It is the armory from which he draws his most potent weapons. See, especially, “To the Sayers of Words,” “This Compost,” “The Song of the Open Road,” and “Pensive on her Dead gazing I heard the Mother of all.”

The poet holds essentially the same attitude toward cosmic humanity, well illustrated in “Salut au Monde:”–

“My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth;
I have look’d for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

“O vapors! I think I have risen with you and moved away to distant
continents, and fallen down there for reasons;
I think I have blown with you, O winds;
O waters, I have finger’d every shore with you.”

Indeed, the whole book is leavened with vehement Comradeship. Not only in the relations of individuals to each other shall loving good-will exist and be cultivated,–not only between the different towns and cities, and all the States of this indissoluble, compacted Union,–but it shall make a tie of fraternity and fusion holding all the races and peoples and countries of the whole earth.

Then the National question. As Whitman’s completed works now stand, in their two volumes, it is certain they could only have grown out of the Secession War; and they will probably go to future ages as in literature the most characteristic identification of that war,– risen from and portraying it, representing its sea of passions and progresses, partaking of all its fierce movements and perturbed emotions, and yet sinking the mere military parts of that war, great as those were, below and with matters far greater, deeper, more human, more expanding, and more enduring.