answers for me an American must answer for any individual or
nation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? or is
it without reference to universal needs? or sprung of the needs of
the less developed society of special ranks? or old needs of pleasure
overlaid by modern science or forms? Does this acknowledge liberty
with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought
for life and death? Will it help breed one goodshaped and wellhung
man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate? Does it
improve manners? Is it for the nursing of the young of the republic?
Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples of the
breasts of the mother of many children? Has it too the old ever-fresh
forbearance and impartiality? Does it look for the same love on the
last born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant,
and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside their own?

The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. The
coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great
can only be satisfied by the demeanor of the vital and great. The
swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float
off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and
goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect
that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist,
the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite ... they are not
unappreciated ... they fall in their place and do their work. The soul
of the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it ... no
disguise can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only
towards as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it
advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has
the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and
wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of
its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If
the one is true the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his
country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

[Footnote A: Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the most original of American
poets, was born in West Hills, Long Island, educated in the Brooklyn
Public Schools, and apprenticed to a printer. As a youth he taught
in a country school, and later went into journalism in New York,
Brooklyn, and New Orleans. T