the poetry of pure
sensation, and mainly, though not wholly, of physical sensation. In a
famous passage the poet says that he wants to go away and live with the
animals. Not one of them is respectable or sorry or conscientious or
worried about its sins.

But his poetry, though animal to a degree, is not unhuman. We do not
know enough about the psychology of the animals to be sure whether, or
not, they have any sense of the world as a whole. Does an elephant or an
eagle perhaps, viewing some immense landscape, catch any glimpse of the
universe, as an object of contemplation, apart from the satisfaction of
his own sensual needs? Probably not. But Whitman, as has been said a
hundred times, was "cosmic." He had an unequalled sense of the bigness
of creation and of "these States." He owned a panoramic eye and a large
passive imagination, and did well to loaf and let the tides of sensation
flow over his soul, drawing out what music was in him without much care
for arrangement or selection.

I once heard an admirer of Walt challenged to name a single masterpiece
of his production. Where was his perfect poem, his gem of flawless
workmanship? He answered, in effect, that he didn't make masterpieces.
His poetry was diffused, like the grass blades that symbolized for him
our democratic masses.

Of course, the man in the street thinks that Walt Whitman's stuff is not
poetry at all, but just bad prose. He acknowledges that there are
splendid lines, phrases, and whole passages. There is that one
beginning, "I open my scuttle at night," and that glorious apostrophe to
the summer night, "Night of south winds, night of the large, few stars."
But, as a whole, his work is tiresome and without art. It is alive, to
be sure, but so is protoplasm. Life is the first thing and form is
secondary; yet form, too, is important. The musician, too lazy or too
impatient to master his instrument, breaks it, and seizes a megaphone.
Shall we call that originality or failure?

It is also a commonplace that the democratic masses of America have
never accepted Walt Whitman as their spokesman. They do not read him, do
not understand or care for him. They like Longfellow, Whittier, and
James Whitcomb Riley, poets of sentiment and domestic life, truly poets
of the people. No man can be a spokesman for America who lacks a sense
of humor, and Whitman was utterly devoid of it, took himself most
seriously, posed as a prophet. I do not say that humor is a desi