inds its best stimulus and delight in free, unhampered nature. It
loves the element of mystery and the suggestion of uncontrollable power.
The modern mind has a sense of the vast, the infinite, that the Greek had
not, and it is drawn by informal beauty more than by the formal.

XIX

It is urged against Whitman that he brings us the materials of poetry, but
not poetry: he brings us the marble block, but not the statue; or he
brings us the brick and mortar, but not the house. False or superficial
analogies mislead us. Poetry is not something made; it is something grown,
it is a vital union of the fact and the spirit. If the verse awakens in us
the poetic thrill, the material, whatever it be, must have been touched
with the transforming spirit of poesy. Why does Whitman's material suggest
to any reader that it is poetic material? Because it has already been
breathed upon by the poetic spirit. A poet may bring the raw material of
poetry in the sense that he may bring the raw material of a gold coin; the
stamp and form you give it does not add to its value. It is doubtful if
any of Whitman's utterances could be worked up into what is called poetry
without a distinct loss of poetic value. What they would gain in finish
they would lose in suggestiveness. This word "suggestiveness" affords one
of the keys to Whitman. The objection to him I have been considering
arises from the failure of the critic to see and appreciate his avowed
purpose to make his page fruitful in poetic suggestion, rather than in
samples of poetic elaboration. "I finish no specimens," he says. "I shower
them by exhaustless laws, fresh and modern continually, as Nature does."
He is quite content if he awaken the poetic emotion without at all
satisfying it. He would have you more eager and hungry for poetry when you
had finished with him than when you began. He brings the poetic stimulus,
and brings it in fuller measure than any contemporary poet; and this is
enough for him.

An eminent musician and composer, the late Dr. Ritter, told me that
reading "Leaves of Grass" excited him to composition as no other poetry
did. Tennyson left him passive and cold, but Whitman set his fingers in
motion at once; he was so fruitful in themes, so suggestive of new
harmonies and melodies. He gave the hints, and left his reader to follow
them up. This is exactly what Whitman wanted to do. It defines his
attitude toward poetry, towards philosophy, towards religion,--to sugg