Suffer, complain of our loads, but catch at their withes as they leave us, Letting the song-birds escape, perceiving not till they've fluttered,— Bitterly weeping then, as we watch them die in the distance. Struggling, we snatch at straws; call out, expecting no answer; Pray, but without any faith; grow laggard and laugh at our anguish; Sin, and with wine-cup deadened, scoff at the dread of hereafter, And, because all seems lost, besiege Death's doorway with gladness. Better we had not been, for what is the goal of such striving? Bubbles that glitter perchance, to burst in thin air as they glitter! Comets that cleave the night, to leave the night but the darker! Smudge that bursts into flame, but only in smoke to be smothered! Out of the gifts of our spring, that only is beautiful counted Which with the day-dawn breaks bud, and dies ere the dew-drops have left it; Smiles there no healthfuler clime, where forms that are fair never perish, But in a life-giving ether grow fairer with ripening seasons? Iroquois god, I adore thee, because thou art lasting and mighty, Turn and gaze at thee, going, as on an all-marvelous vision, Dread thee, thou art so serene,- but hate thee with hatred most bitter, Taunter of all who dabble thy foam, and think to discover. Below this spire, a town, Where, truant from the city dials, come The lazy hours to lose themselves in dreams And sweet forgetfulness of summer heat; An idle sort of place, where all day long It seems like evening with the day's work done, Where men haste not, because there is no haste, And toil but little, for they've little need; A restful corner, where the August breeze, From softly listening, finger on the lip, At length from listlessness falls fast asleep, Till there is no sound heard save, now and then, Low thunder of a wagon on the bridge, Some shrill cicada from his citadel Beneath a thistle, challenging the noon, The whet of scythe and heavy hoist of sail, The dip of unseen oars, monotonous, And softly breathing waves that doze below, Too weak to more than turn themselves, complain, And doze again. REST. -Alongshore. Τ WALT WHITMAN. 'HE WHITMANS, originally English, have lived in America for three hundred years, and the Holland Dutch family of the poet's mother, the Van Velsors, about as long, both families farming their own land on Long Island, within a few miles of one another. Their private burial grounds, with their sunken mounds and numerous gray lichen-covered headstones, may still be seen, the one on its bare, wind-swept hillside, the other surrounded by trees, testifying to the length of residence of both families in this neighborhood. The Van Velsors lived at Cold Springs, the Whitmans at West Hills. At the latter village on the 31st of May, 1819, the poet was born. His parentage was of the best. From his father's family he inherited unusual strength, firmness and force of character; from his mother's, tenderness and sympathy. He himself always makes much of his parentage, and of his purely American origin. "Well begotten and raised by a perfect mother," he says; and again, "My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air. Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their parents the same." He grew up on Long Island, at West Hills and Brooklyn, went to the public school for a few years when old enough, then to a printing office and learned the trade. While still quite young (under twenty), he taught a country school for a time, then worked at his trade and edited newspapers, the Eagle and Freeman among others. In '48 he went to New Orleans, walking, driving and by steamboat, often stopping on the way. Worked there a year on the editorial staff of the Crescent. In June, 1849, he returned to New York. For five years he worked as a carpenter, building small frame houses in Brooklyn and selling them as completed. He had all along, besides his editorial writings in newspapers, written essays, stories, sketches and short poems for the magazines, and one tale called Franklin Evans" (now lost) for separate publication in book form; but very early in the fifties (if not sooner), he began to contemplate his special undertaking, "Leaves of Grass," the first edition of which appeared in 1855, the second the following year, the third in Boston in 1860. 66 66 Leaves of Grass," upon which his fame will rest. Leaves of Grass" both in matter and manner is unlike any previous book and cannot be judged by the current canons. It is not plain straightforward prose, neither is it poetry in the ordinary technical sense. In structure it is rhythmic prose; in force and meaning it is poetry of a high if not the highest order. Its subject, directly or indirectly, is always Walt Whitman himself treated as the typical man, not so much as being better than others, but as seeing more clearly the divinity that is in every human being. "I celebrate myself," he says," and what I assume you should assume." The man himself, the whole man, body and soul including his relations to the material world about him and the practical and social life of his time, is faithfully mirrored in his book, the living man, Walt Whitman, being reproduced with such intense vividness, such actual vitality that we dare not deny the justice of his final dictum. R. M. B. In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand? Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, choked with wild cries; O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach! O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind - O belching and desperate! O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace, But away at night as you fly, none looking-0 then the unloosened ocean, Of tears! tears! tears! THE WORLD BELOW THE BRINE. THE world below the brine, Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle, openings, and pink turf, Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers, |