He  sings  more  in  terms  of  personality,  of  democ-
racy, of  nationalism,  of  sex,  of  i^nmorti^lltY■  of  com^_
jradeship;  more  of  the  general,  the  continuous,  the
world-wide;  more  of  wholes  and  less  of  parts,  more
of  man  and  less  of  men.  His  religion  takes  no  ac-
count of  sects  and  creeds,  but  arises  from  the
contemplation  of  the  soul,  of  the  Eternal,  of  the  uni-
verse. We  do  not  get  the  solace  and  the  companion-
ship with  rural  nature  in  Whitman  that  we  get  in
the  modem  nature  poets.  With  them  we  admire  the
"violet  by  a  mossy  stone,"  or  the  pretty  shell  on  the
seashore;  with  Whitman  we  saunter  on  the  hills,  or
inhale  the  salt  air  of  the  seashore,  or  our  minds  open
under  the  spread  of  the  midnight  skies  —  always
the  large,  the  elemental,  the  processional,  the  mod-
ern. The  scholarly,  the  elaborated,  the  polished,  the
architectural,  the  Tennysonian  perfume  and  tech-
nique, the  Wordsworthian  sweet  rusticity  and  af-
fihation  with  fells  and  groves,  the  Emersonian  mys-
ticism and  charm  of  the  wild  and  the  sequestered,
were  not  for  him  or  in  him;  nor  the  epic  grandeur  of
323


ACCEPTING  THE  UNIVERSE

Milton,  the  dramatic  power  of  Shakespeare,  nor,
usually,  the  lyric  thrill  of  many  of  the  minor  poets.
You  embark  on  an  endless  quest  with  Whitman;
not  on  a  picnic,  nor  a  "day  off,"  but  a  day-by-day
and  a  night-by-night  journey  through  the  universe:

"  I  tramp  a  perpetual  journey.
My  signs  are  a  rain-proof  coat,  good  shoes,  and  a  staff  cut  from

the  woods.
No  friend  of  mine  takes  his  ease  in  my  chair,
I  have  no  chair,  no  church,  no  philosophy,
I  lead  no  man  to  a  dinner  table,  library,  or  exchange.
