Walt Whitman still lives. One more utterance from our old original individualistic
American poet, now, as he tells us, in his seventy-second year, and not
expecting to write any more; this, indeed, written as it were in defiance
of augury. The grand old fellow in that little of new he gives us is in
good fettle and equal to himself. Most of the volume is made up of recollections,
memories not only of facts, but of thoughts, and they are not the least
interesting, especially his recollections of persons once famous, but long
since gathered in by the reaper. The following is mystical, indeed everything
that Whitman has written is mystical, a shadowing forth of a half comprehended
entity in thought:
"After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,
Accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought,
Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers
Coating, compassing, covering - after ages' and ages' encrustations,
Then only may these songs reach fruition."