Outlines of English and American Literature Part 51

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tuck'd my trowser ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

Thus he rambles on, gabbing of every place or occupation or newspaper report that comes into his head. When he ends this grotesque "Song of Myself" after a thousand lines or more, he makes another just like it. We read a few words here and there, amazed that any publisher should print such rubbish; and then, when we are weary of Whitman's conceit or bad taste, comes a flash of insight, of imagination, of poetry:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?

Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

There are, in short, hundreds of pages of such "chanting" with its grain of wheat hid in a bushel of chaff. We refer to it here not because it is worth reading but to record the curious fact that many European critics hail it as typical American poetry, even while we wonder why anybody should regard it as either American or poetic.

[Sidenote: FOREIGN OPINION]

The explanation is simple. Europeans have not yet rid themselves of the idea that America is the strange, wild land Cooper's _Pioneers_, and that any poetry produced here must naturally be uncouth, misshapen, defiant of all poetic laws or traditions. To such critics Whitman's crudity seems typical of a country where one is in nightly danger of losing his scalp, where arguments are settled by revolvers, and where a hungry man needs only to shoot a buffalo or a bear from his back door. Meanwhile America, the country that planted colleges and churches in a wilderness, that loves liberty because she honors law, that never saw a knight in armor but that has, even in her plainsmen and lumberjacks, a chivalry for woman that would adorn a Bayard,--that real America ignores the bulk of Whitman's work simply because she knows that, of all her poets, he is the least representative of her culture, her ideals, her heroic and aspiring life.

[Sidenote: DRUM TAPS]

The second division of Whitman's work is made up chiefly of verses written in war time, to some of which he gave the significant t.i.tle, _Drum Taps_. In such poems as as "Beat, Beat, Drums," "Cavalry Crossing a Ford" and "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame" he reflected the emotional excitement of '61 and the stern days that followed. Note, for example, the startling vigor of "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors," which depicts an old negro woman by the roadside, looking with wonder on the free flag which she sees for the first time aloft over marching men:

Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human, With your woolly-white and turban'd head and bare bony feet?

Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

Another side of the war is reflected in such poems as "Come up from the Fields, Father," an exquisite picture of an old mother and father receiving the news of their son's death on the battlefield. In the same cla.s.s belong two fine tributes, "O Captain, My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," written in moments of n.o.ble emotion when the news came that Lincoln was dead. The former tribute, with its rhythmic swing and lyric refrain, indicates what Whitman might have done in poetry had he been a more patient workman. So also does "Pioneers," a lyric that is wholly American and Western and exultant:

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, Pioneers! O Pioneers!

[Sidenote: LATER POEMS]

In the third cla.s.s of Whitman's works are the poems written late in life, when he had learned to suppress his blatant egotism and to pay some little attention to poetic form and melody. Though his lines are still crude and irregular, many of them move to a powerful rhythm, such as the impressive "With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea," which suggests the surge and beat of breakers on the sh.o.r.e. In others he gives finely imaginative expression to an ideal or a yearning, and his verse rises to high poetic levels. Note this allegory of the spider, an insect that, when adrift or in a strange place, sends out delicate filaments on the air currents until one thread takes hold of some solid substance and is used as a bridge over the unknown:

A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my soul, where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of s.p.a.ce, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITMAN'S BIRTHPLACE, WEST HILLS, LONG ISLAND]

Among the best of Whitman's works are his poems to death. "Joy, s.h.i.+pmate, Joy," "Death's Valley," "Darest Thou Now, O Soul," "Last Invocation,"

"Good-Bye, My Fancy,"--in such haunting lyrics he reflects the natural view of death, not as a terrible or tragic or final event but as a confident going forth to meet new experiences. Other notable poems that well repay the reading are "The Mystic Trumpeter," "The Man-of-War Bird," "The Ox Tamer," "Thanks in Old Age" and "Aboard at a s.h.i.+p's Helm."

In naming the above works our purpose is simply to lure the reader away from the insufferable Whitmanesque "chant" and to attract attention to a few poems that sound a new note in literature, a note of freedom, of joy, of superb confidence, which warms the heart when we hear it. When these poems are known others will suggest themselves: "Rise, O Days, from Your Fathomless Deeps," "I Hear America Singing," "There was a Boy Went Forth,"

"The Road Unknown," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." There is magic in such names; but unfortunately in most cases the reader will find only an alluring t.i.tle and a few scattered lines of poetry; the rest is Whitman.

[Sidenote: DEMOCRACY]

The author of the "Song of Myself" proclaimed himself the poet of democracy and wrote many verses on his alleged subject; but those who read them will soon tire of one whose idea of democracy was that any man is as good, as wise, as G.o.dlike as any other. Perhaps his best work in this field is "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood," a patriotic poem read at "Commencement" time in Dartmouth College (1872). There is too much of vainglorious boasting in the poem (for America should be modest, and can afford to be modest), but it has enough of prophetic vision and exalted imagination to make us overlook its unworthy spread-eagleism.

[Sidenote: PRAYER OF COLUMBUS]

As a farewell to Whitman one should read what is perhaps his n.o.blest single work, "The Prayer of Columbus." The poem is supposed to reflect the thought of Columbus when, as a worn-out voyager, an old man on his last expedition, he looked out over his wrecked s.h.i.+ps to the lonely sea beyond; but the reader may see in it another picture, that of a broken old man in his solitary house at Camden, writing with a trembling hand the lines which reflect his unshaken confidence:

My terminus near, The clouds already closing in upon me, The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, I yield my s.h.i.+ps to Thee My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd; Let the old timbers part, I will not part, I will cling fast to Thee, O G.o.d, though the waves buffet me, Thee, Thee at least I know.

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving?

What do I know of life? what of myself?

I know not even my own work past or present; Dim ever-s.h.i.+fting guesses of it spread before me, Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, Mocking, perplexing me.

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?

As if some miracle, some hand divine, unseal'd my eyes, Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, And on the distant waves sail countless s.h.i.+ps, And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

THE PROSE WRITERS

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)

Emerson is the mountaineer of our literature; to read him is to have the impression of being on the heights. It is solitary there, far removed from ordinary affairs; but the air is keen, the outlook grand, the heavens near.

Our companions are the familiar earth by day or the mysterious stars by night, and these are good if only to recall the silent splendor of G.o.d's universe amid the pother of human inventions. There also the very spirit of liberty, which seems to have its dwelling among the hills, enters into us and makes us sympathize with Emerson's message of individual freedom.

It is still a question whether Emerson should be cla.s.sed with the poets or prose writers, and our only reason for placing him with the latter is that his "Nature" seems more typical than his "Wood Notes," though in truth both works convey precisely the same message. He was a great man who used prose or verse as suited his mood at the moment; but he was never a great poet, and only on rare occasions was he a great prose writer.

LIFE. Emerson has been called "the winged Franklin," "the Yankee Sh.e.l.ley" and other contradictory names which strive to express the union of shrewd sense and lofty idealism that led him to write "Hitch your wagon to a star" and many another aphorism intended to bring heaven and earth close together. We shall indicate enough of his inheritance if we call him a Puritan of the Puritans, a moralist descended from seven generations of heroic ministers who had helped to make America a free nation, and who had practiced the love of G.o.d and man and country before preaching it to their congregations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RALPH WALDO EMERSON]

The quality of these ancestors entered into Emerson and gave him the granite steadfastness that is one of his marked characteristics. Meeting him in his serene old age one would hardly suspect him of heroism; but to meet him in childhood is to understand the kind of man he was, and must be. If you would appreciate the quality of that childhood, picture to yourself a bare house with an open fire and plenty of books, but little else of comfort. There are a mother and six children in the house, desperately poor; for the father is dead and has left his family nothing and everything,--nothing that makes life rich, everything in the way of ideals and blessed memories to make life wealthy. The mother works as only a poor woman can from morning till night. The children go to school by day; but instead of playing after school-hours they run errands for the neighbors, drive cows from pasture, shovel snow, pick huckleberries, earn an honest penny. In the evening they read together before the open fire. When they are hungry, as they often are, a Puritan aunt who shares their poverty tells them stories of human endurance. The circle narrows when an older brother goes to college; the rest reduce their meals and spare their pennies in order to help him. After graduation he teaches school and devotes his earnings to giving the next brother his chance. All the while they speak courteously to each other, remember their father's teaching that they are children of G.o.d, and view their hard life steadily in the light of that sublime doctrine.

[Sidenote: THE COLLEGE BOY]

The rest of the story is easily told. Emerson was born in Boston, then a straggling town, in 1803. When his turn came he went to Harvard, and largely supported himself there by such odd jobs as only a poor student knows how to find. Wasted time he called it; for he took little interest in college discipline or college fun and was given to haphazard reading, "sinfully strolling from book to book, from care to idleness," as he said. Later he declared that the only good thing he found in Harvard was a solitary chamber.

[Sidenote: THE PREACHER]

After leaving college he taught school and shared his earnings, according to family tradition. Then he began to study for the ministry; or perhaps we should say "read," for Emerson never really studied anything. At twenty-three he was licensed to preach, and three years later was chosen pastor of the Second Church in Boston.

It was the famous Old North Church in which the Mathers had preached, and the Puritan divines must have turned in their graves when the young radical began to utter his heresies from the ancient pulpit. He was loved and trusted by his congregation, but presently he differed with them in the matter of the ritual and resigned his ministry.

Next he traveled in Europe, where he found as little of value as he had previously found in college. The old inst.i.tutions, which roused the romantic enthusiasm of Irving and Longfellow, were to him only relics of barbarism. He went to Europe, he said, to see two men, and he found them in Wordsworth and Carlyle. His friends.h.i.+p with the latter and the letters which pa.s.sed between "the sage of Chelsea" and "the sage of Concord" (as collected and published by Charles Eliot Norton in his _Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson_) are the most interesting result of his pilgrimage.

[Sidenote: THE LECTURER]

On his return he settled in the village of Concord, which was to be his home for the remainder of his long life. He began to lecture, and so well was the "Lyceum" established at that time that he was soon known throughout the country. For forty years this lecturing continued, and the strange thing about it is that in all that time he hardly met one audience that understood him or that carried away any definite idea of what he had talked about. Something n.o.ble in the man seemed to attract people; as Lowell said, they did not go to hear what Emerson said but to hear Emerson.

[Sidenote: THE WRITER]

Meanwhile he was writing prose and poetry. His literary work began in college and consisted largely in recording such thoughts or quotations as seemed worthy of preservation. In his private _Journal_ (now published in several volumes) may be found practically everything he put into the formal works which he sent forth from Concord. These had at first a very small circle of readers; but the circle widened steadily, and the phenomenon is more remarkable in view of the fact that the author avoided publicity and had no ambition for success. He lived contentedly in a country village; he cultivated his garden and his neighbors; he spent long hours alone with nature; he wrote the thoughts that came to him and sent them to make their own way in the world, while he himself remained, as he said, "far from fame behind the birch trees."

The last years of his life were as the twilight of a perfect day.

His mental powers failed slowly; he seemed to drift out of the present world into another of pure memories; even his friends became spiritualized, lost the appearance of earth and a.s.sumed their eternal semblance. When he stood beside the coffin of Longfellow, looking intently into the poet's face, he was heard to murmur, "A sweet, a gracious personality, but I have forgotten his name." To the inevitable changes (the last came in 1882) he adapted himself with the same serenity which marked his whole life. He even smiled as he read the closing lines of his "Terminus":