--merged, swamped, effaced. See him in Whitman rising above it all. See
it all shot through and through with his quality and obedient to his will.
See the all-leveling tendency of democracy, the effacing and sterilizing
power of a mechanical and industrial age, set at naught or reversed by a
single towering personality. See America, its people, their doings, their
types, their good and evil traits, all bodied forth in one composite
character, and this character justifying itself and fronting the universe
with the old joy and contentment.

IV

"The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or is he past it and master of it?"

Do we not, consciously or unconsciously, ask this or a similar question of
every poet or artist whom we pass in review before us? Is he master of his
culture, or does it master him? Does he strike back through it to simple,
original nature, or is he a potted plant? Does he retain the native savage
virtues, or is he entirely built up from the outside? We constantly
mistake culture for mere refinement, which it is not: it is a liberating
process; it is a clearing away of obstructions, and the giving to inherent
virtues a chance to express themselves. It makes savage nature friendly
and considerate. The aim of culture is not to get rid of nature, but to
utilize nature. The great poet is always a "friendly and flowing savage,"
the master and never the slave of the complex elements of our artificial
lives.

Though our progress and civilization are a triumph over nature, yet in an
important sense we never get away from nature or improve upon her. Her
standards are still our standards, her sweetness and excellence are still
our aim. Her health, her fertility, her wholeness, her freshness, her
innocence, her evolution, we would fain copy or reproduce. We would, if we
could, keep the pungency and aroma of her wild fruit in our cultivated
specimens, the virtue and hardiness of the savage in our fine gentlemen,
the joy and spontaneity of her bird-songs in our poetry, the grace and
beauty of her forms in our sculpture and carvings.

A poetic utterance from an original individual standpoint, something
definite and characteristic,--this is always the crying need. What a fine
talent has this or that young British or American poet whom we might name!
But we see that the singer has not yet made this talent his own; it is a
kind of borrowed capital; it is the general taste an