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Page 58
Walt Whitman, for instance, is accounted by many of us a contemporary
prophet. He abolishes the usual human distinctions, brings all
conventionalisms into solution, and loves and celebrates hardly any
human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the
race. For this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp, a rider on omnibus-tops
and ferry-boats, and, considered either practically or academically, a
worthless, unproductive being. His verses are but ejaculations--things
mostly without subject or verb, a succession of interjections on an
immense scale. He felt the human crowd as rapturously as Wordsworth felt
the mountains, felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence, simply
to absorb one's mind in which should be business sufficient and worthy
to fill the days of a serious man. As he crosses Brooklyn ferry, this is
what he feels:--
Flood-tide below me! I watch you, face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see
you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes!
how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence,
are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you
might suppose.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from
shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west,
and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the
sun half an hour high.
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years
hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the
falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
It avails not, neither time or place--distance avails not.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I
felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a
crowd;
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and
the bright flow, I was refresh'd;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the
swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the
thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked.
I too many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half
an hour high;
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in
the air, with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies,
and left the rest in strong shadow,
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging
toward the south.
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships
at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars;
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups,
the frolicsome crests and glistening;
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray
walls of the granite store-houses by the docks;
On the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys
burning high ... into the night,
Casting their flicker of black ... into the clefts of streets.
These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you.[J]
[J] 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' (abridged).
And so on, through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem. And, if you
wish to see what this hoary loafer considered the most worthy way of
profiting by life's heaven-sent opportunities, read the delicious volume
of his letters to a young car-conductor who had become his friend:--
"NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 1868.
"_Dear Pete_,--It is splendid here this forenoon--bright and
cool. I was out early taking a short walk by the river only
two squares from where I live.... Shall I tell you about [my
life] just to fill up? I generally spend the forenoon in my
room writing, etc., then take a bath fix up and go out about
twelve and loafe somewhere or call on someone down town or on
business, or perhaps if it is very pleasant and I feel like
it ride a trip with some driver friend on Broadway from 23rd
Street to Bowling Green, three miles each way. (Every day I
find I have plenty to do, every hour is occupied with
something.) You know it is a never ending amusement and study
and recreation for me to ride a couple of hours on a pleasant
afternoon on a Broadway stage in this way. You see everything
as you pass, a sort of living, endless panorama--shops and
splendid buildings and great windows: on the broad sidewalks
crowds of women richly dressed continually passing,
altogether different, superior in style and looks from any to
be seen anywhere else--in fact a perfect stream of
people--men too dressed in high style, and plenty of
foreigners--and then in the streets the thick crowd of
carriages, stages, carts, hotel and private coaches, and in
fact all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams, mile
after mile, and the splendor of such a great street and so
many tall, ornamental, noble buildings many of them of white
marble, and the gayety and motion on every side: you will not
wonder how much attraction all this is on a fine day, to a
great loafer like me, who enjoys so much seeing the busy
world move by him, and exhibiting itself for his amusement,
while he takes it easy and just looks on and observes."[K]
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