then in Lucretius,--a quality easier felt than described. It is a tidal
wave of emotion running all through the poems, which is now and then
crested with such passages as this:--

"I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
I call to the earth and sea, half held by the night.

"Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.

"Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with
blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my
sake!
Far-swooping, elbow'd earth! rich, apple-blossom'd earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!"

Professor Clifford calls it "cosmic emotion,"--a poetic thrill and
rhapsody in contemplating the earth as a whole,--its chemistry and
vitality, its bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability
of its laws and principles to human, aesthetic, and art products. It
affords the key to the theory of art upon which Whitman's poems are
projected, and accounts for what several critics call their sense of
magnitude,--"something of the vastness of the succession of objects in
Nature."

"I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those
of the earth!
I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate
the theory of the earth!
No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude
of the earth."

Or again, in his "Laws for Creation:"--

"All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the
compact truth of the world,
There shall be no subject too pronounced--All works shall illustrate
the divine law of indirections."

Indeed, the earth ever floats in this poet's mind as his mightiest
symbol,--his type of completeness and power. It is the armory from which
he draws his most potent weapons. See, especially, "To the Sayers of
Words," "This Compost," "The Song of the Open Road," and "Pensive on her
Dead gazing I heard the Mother of all."

The poet holds essentially the same attitude toward