Our account of the last month's literature would be incomplete without some notice of a curious and lawless collection of poems, called Leaves of Grass, and issued in a thin quarto without the name of publisher or author. The poems, twelve in number, are neither in rhyme nor blank verse, but in a sort of excited prose broken into lines without any attempt at measure or regularity, and, as many readers will perhaps think, without any idea of sense or reason. The writer's scorn for the wonted usages of good writing; extends to the vocabulary he adopts; words usually banished from polite society are here employed without reserve and with perfect indifference to their effect on the reader's mind; and not only is the book one not to be read aloud to a mixed audience, but the introduction of terms, never before heard or seen, and of slang expressions, often renders an otherwise striking passage altogether laughable. But, as the writer is a new light in poetry, it is only fair to let him state his theory for himself. We extract from the preface: -
"The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity.
Nothing is better than simplicity, and the sunlight of
letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity -
nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of
definiteness... To speak in literature, with the perfect
rectitude and the insouciance of the movements of animals
and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the
woods, is the flawless triumph of art... The greatest poet
has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thought
and things, without increase or diminution, and is the free
channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be
meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or
effect, or originality to hang in the way between me and the
rest, like curtains. What I feel, I feel for precisely what
it is. Let who may exalt, or startle, or fascinate, or
soothe, I will have purposes, as health, or heat, or snow
has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience
or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of
my composition. You shall stand by my side to look in the
mirror with me."
The application of these principles, and of many others equally
peculiar, which are expounded in a style equally oracular
throughout the long preface, - is made passim, and often with
comical success, in the poems themselves, which may briefly be
described as a compound of the New England transcendentalist and
New York rowdy. A fireman or omnibus driver, who had intelligence
enough to absorb the speculations of that school of thought which
culminated at Boston some fifteen or eighteen years ago, and
resources of expression to put them forth again in a form of his
own, with sufficient self-conceit and contempt for public taste
to affront all usual propriety of diction, might have written
this gross yet elevated, this superficial yet profound, this
preposterous yet somehow fascinating book. As we say, it is a
mixture of Yankee transcendentalism and New York rowdyism, and,
what must be surprising to both these elements, they here seem to
fuse and combine with the most perfect harmony. The vast and
vague conceptions of the one, lose nothing of their quality in
passing through the coarse and odd intellectual medium of the
other; while there is an original perception of nature, a manly
brawn, and an epic directness in our new poet, which belong to no
other adept of the transcendental school. But we have no
intention of regularly criticising this very irregular
production; our aim is rather to cull, from the rough and ragged
thicket of its pages, a few passages equally remarkable in point
of thought and expression. Of course we do not select those which
are the most transcendental or the most bold: -
"I play not a march for victors only.... I play great
marches for conquered and slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall... battles are lost in the
same spirit in which they are won.
I sound triumphal drums for the dead....
I fling through my embouchures the loudest and gayest
music to them -
Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war-vessels
sank in the sea, and to those themselves who sank
in the sea.
And to all generals that lost engagements, and to all
overcome heroes, and the numberless unknown heroes equal
to the greatest heroes known."
"I am the mashed fireman, with breast-bone broken....
tumbling walls buried me in their debris -
Heat and smoke, I respired.... I heard the yelling shouts
of my comrades -
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels.
They have cleared the beams away.... they tenderly lift
me forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt.... the pervading
hush is for my sake.
Painless after all I lie, exhausted, but not so unhappy.
White and beautiful are the faces around me.... the heads
are bared of their firecaps -
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches."
- - -
"I tell not the fall of Alamo.... not one escaped to tell
the fall of Alamo:
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.
.........
They were the glory of the race of rangers,
Matchless with a horse, a rifle, a song, a supper, or a
courtship:
Large, turbulent, brave, handsome, generous, proud and
affectionate -
Bearded, sun-burnt, dressed in the free costume of
hunters."
- - -
"Did you read in the books of the old-fashioned frigate
fight?
Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you,
His was the English pluck, and there is no tougher or
truer, and never was, and never will be:
Along the lowered eve he came, terribly raking us.
We close with him: the yards entangled... the masts
touched:
My captain lashed fast with his own hands.
We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water-
On our lower gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the
first fire, killing all around and blowing up, overhead.
Ten o'clock at night and the full moon shining, and the
leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported;
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners in the after-hold,
to give them a chance for themselves.
The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by
the sentinels -
They saw so many strange faces, they did not know whom
to trust.
Our frigate was a-fire - the other asked if we demanded
quarters? if our colors were struck and the fighting
done?
I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little
captain -
`We have not struck,' he composedly cried. `We have just
begun our part of the fighting.'
Only three guns were in use.
One was directed by the captain himself, against the
enemy's mainmast:
Two, well served with grape and canister, silenced his
musketry and cleared his decks.
......
Not a moment's cease -
The leaks gained fast on the pumps.... the fire eat
toward the powder magazine:
One of the pumps was shot away; it was generally thought
we were sinking.
Serene stood the little captain:
He was not hurried.... his voice was neither high or low-
His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon,
they surrendered to us."
- - -
"As to you, life, I reckon you are the leavings of many
deaths:
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.
I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven -
O suns! O grave of graves! O perpetual transfers and
promotions, if you do not say anything, how can I say
anything,
Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest -
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing
twilight?
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk - toss on the black stems
that decay in the muck -
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs!"
- - -
"A slave at auction!
I help the auctioneer.... the sloven does not half know
his business.
`Gentlemen, look on this curious creature:
Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high
enough for him -
For him, the globe lay preparing quintillions of years,
without one animal or plant -
For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled:
In that head, the all-baffling brain -
In it, and below it, the making of heroes.
Examine these limbs, red, black, or white... they are
very cunning in tendon and nerve;
They shall be stript, that you may see them.
.......
Within there runs his blood.... the same old blood.....
the same red-running blood -
There, swells and jets his heart.... there all passions
and desires.... all reachings and aspirations;
Do you think they are not there, because they are not
expressed in parlors and lecture rooms?
This is not only one man.... he is the father of those
who shall be fathers in their turns:
In him the start of populous states and rich republics;
Of him, countless immortal lives, with countless
embodiments and enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his
offspring, through the centuries?
.....
A woman at auction!
She, too, is not only herself... she is the teeming
mother of mothers:
She is the bearer of them who shall grow and be mates to
the mothers.
Her daughters, or their daughters' daughters... who knows
who shall mate with them?
Who knows, through the centuries, what heroes may come
from them?
In them, and of them, natal love... in them the divine
mystery... the same old, beautiful mystery."
- - -
"Behold a woman!
She looks out from her Quaker cap.... her face is clearer
and more beautiful than the sky,
She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the
farm house -
The sun just shines on her old white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen:
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters
spun it with the distaff and the wheel.
The melodious character of the earth!
The finish, beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does
not wish to go!
The justified mother of men!"
- - -
"Old age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days."
- - -
"Day, full-blown and splendid.... day of the immense sun,
and action, and ambition, and laughter:
The night follows close, with millions of suns, and
sleep, and restoring darkness."
As seems very proper in a book of transcendental poetry, the
author withholds his name from the title page, and presents his
portrait, neatly engraved on steel, instead. This, no doubt, is
upon the principle that the name is merely accidental; while the
portrait affords an idea of the essential being from whom these
utterances proceed. We must add, however, that this significant
reticence does not prevail throughout the volume, for we learn on
p. 29, that our poet is "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the
roughs, a kosmos." That he was an American, we knew before, for,
aside from America, there is no quarter of the universe where such
a production could have had a genesis. That he was one of the
roughs was also tolerably plain; but that he was a kosmos, is a
piece of news we were hardly prepared for. Precisely what a kosmos
is, we trust Mr. Whitman will take an early occasion to inform the
impatient public.