. Or I throw my whole being into
Troilus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost soul upon the
Stygian Banks staying for waftage,' I melt into the air with a
voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone."

This power to penetrate and to identify was exercised with peculiar
directness and plenitude by Walt Whitman, prophet of the
omnipotence of man. To find the burden of his message formulated
in the single phrase one may turn to his Poems quite at random.

"My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the
whole earth."
"I inhale great draughts of space,--
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
mine.
. . . . .
All seems beautiful to me."

Of the artist may be affirmed what Whitman affirms of the
Answerer:--

"Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and
tongue,
He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men,
and any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he
sees how they join."

As the artist sends out his spirit through the world, as he becomes
the channel of universal and divine influences, so he is admitted to
new and ever new revelations of beauty. And stirred by the glorious
vision, he brings that beauty to earth, communicating it to his
fellows and making them partakers of it, as he gives his feeling
expression. Thus finding utterance as the prophet of God, he
consummates his mission and takes his place in the world order.
Herein he has his being, for life is expression; and each new
harmony which he makes manifest is the medium of his fuller
identification with the universal life.

So it is that the artist is the supreme interpreter, the mediator
between man and beauty. His work is a work of joy, of gratitude, of
worship. He is the happy servant of God, His prophet, through
whom He declares Himself to the children of men.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Enjoyment of Art, by Carleton Noyes

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