del
Your Omar."

In "Despair" there crops out another bold inference of science, the vision
"of an earth that is dead."

"The homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of
space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race."

In the "Epilogue" he glances into the sidereal heavens:--

"The fires that arch this dusky dot--
Yon myriad-worlded way--
The vast sun-clusters' gather'd blaze,
World-isles in lonely skies,
Whole heavens within themselves, amaze
Our brief humanities."

As our American poet never elaborates in the Tennysonian fashion, he does
not use science as material, but as inspiration. His egoism and
anthropomorphic tendency are as great as those of the early bards, and he
makes everything tell for the individual. Let me give a page or two from
the "Song of Myself," illustrative of his attitude in this respect:--

"I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains,
esculent roots,
And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.

"In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against any approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

* * * * *

"I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an endorser of things to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and large bunches between the steps,
All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.

"Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--I know I was even there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

"Long I was hugged close--long and long.
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me,