ins to water.

Whitman's glorification of the body has led some critics to say that he is
the poet of the body only. But it is just as true to say he is the poet of
the soul only. He always seeks the spiritual through the material. He
treats the body and the soul as one, and he treats all things as having
reference to the soul.

"I will not make a poem, nor the least part, of a poem, but has
reference to the soul,
Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
is no one, nor any particle of one, but has reference to the soul."

The curious physiological strain which runs through the poems is to be
considered in the light of this idea. He exalts the body because in doing
so he exalts the soul.

"Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
objects pass into spiritual results."

II

The reader of Whitman must do his or her own moralizing; the poet is here
not to deprecate or criticise, but to love and celebrate; he has no
partialities; our notions of morality do not concern him; he exploits the
average man just as he finds him; he _is_ the average man for the time
being and confesses to all his sins and shortcomings, and we will make of
the result good or evil, according to our mental horizon. That his work is
unmixed good is the last thing the poet would claim for it. He has not,
after the easy fashion of the moralist, set the good here and the bad
there; he has blended them as they are in nature and in life; our profit
and discipline begin when we have found out whither he finally tends, or
when we have mastered him and extracted the good he holds. If we expect he
is going to preach an austere system of morality to us, or any system of
morality, we are doomed to disappointment. Does Nature preach such a
system? does Nature preach at all? neither will he. He presents you the
elements of good and evil in himself in vital fusion and play; your part
is to see how the totals are at last good.

It is objected that Whitman is too persistent in declaring himself an
animal, when the thing a man is least likely to forget is that he is an
animal and the thing he is least likely to remember is that he is a spirit
and a child of God. But Whitman insists with the same determination that
he is a spirit and an heir of immortality,--not as one who has cheated the
devil of his due, but as one who shares the privileges and felicities of
all, and who finds