o sexual
affection.

He assumes, without raising the question, that the love of man for man
co-exists with the love of man for woman in one and the same individual.
The relation of the two modes of feeling is clearly stated in this
poem:--

"Fast-anchored, eternal, O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! More resistless than I can tell, the thought of you
Then separate, as disembodied, or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation;
I ascend--I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life."

Neuropathical Urnings are not hinted at in any passage of his works. As
his friend and commentator Mr. Burroughs puts it: "The sentiment is
primitive, athletic, taking form in all manner of large and homely
out-of-door images, and springs, as anyone may see, directly from the
heart and experience of the poet."

This being so, Whitman never suggests that comradeship may occasion the
development of physical desires. But then he does not in set terms
condemn these desires, or warn his disciples against them. To a Western
boy he says:--

"If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently seek
lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine."

Like Plato, in the Phaedrus, Whitman describes an enthusiastic type of
masculine emotion, leaving its private details to the moral sense and
special inclination of the person concerned.[66]

The language of "Calamus" (that section of "Leaves of Grass" which is
devoted to the gospel of comradeship) has a passionate glow, a warmth of
emotional tone, beyond anything to which the modern world is used in
the celebration of the love of friends. It recalls to our mind the early
Greek enthusiasm--that fellowship in arms which flourished among Dorian
tribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric Hellas. Nor does the poet
himself appear to be unconscious that there are dangers and difficulties
involved in the highly-pitched emotions he is praising. The whole tenor
of two mysterious compositions, entitled "Whoever you are, Holding me
now in Hand," and "Trickle, Drops," suggests an underlying sense of
spiritual conflict. The following poem, again, is sufficiently
significant and typical to call for literal transcription:--

"Earth, my likeness!

Though you look so impressive, ample and spheric here,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something