Who is the poet? 
What is his subject
matter? 
What is the ideal
form of poetry? 
What is the poem's
effect on the reader? 
The Americans of all nations at any time
upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The
United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear
tame and orderly to their ample largeness and stir. Here at last is something
in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the
day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.
Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and
details magnificently moving in vast masses....
Other states indicate themselves in their
deputies....but the genius of the United States is not best or most in
its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges
or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors...but
always most in the common people.
Their manners speech dress friendships--the freshness and candor of their
physiogomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage...their deathless
attachment to freedom --their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or
mean--the practical acknowledgement of the citizens of one state by the
citizens of all other states--the fierceness of their aroused resentment--their
curiosity and welcome of novelty--their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy--their
susceptibility to a slight--the air they have of persons who never knew
how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors--the fluency of their
speech--their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and
native elegance of soul...their good temper and open-handedness--the terrible
significance of their elections--the President's taking off his hat to
them not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry.
It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it. ...
The
American poets are to enclose old and new for American as the race of races.
Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people.
To him the other continents arrive as contributions...he gives them reception
for their sake and his own sake. His
spirit responds to his country's spirit....he incarnates its geography
and natural life and rivers and lakes.
Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia
and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson,
do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure
into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland
and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over
Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior,
and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the
seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the
waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him.
When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches
longer he easily stretches with them north or south....For
such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendant and new.
It is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic.
Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other
nations be chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that
finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here
the theme is creative and has vista. Here
comes one among the wellbeloved stonecutters and plans with decision and
science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there
are now no solid forms.
Of all nations the United States with veins
full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest
and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee
so much as their poets shall. Of
all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from
him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity. Nothing
out of its place is good or quality its fit proportions neither more nor
less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer
of his age and land .... he supplies what wants supplying and checks what
wants checking. If
peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,
thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and
the arts and commerce--lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality--federal,
state or municipal government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel
by land and sea .... nothing too close, nothing too far off ... the stars
not too far off. In war he is the most deadly force of the war. Who
recruits him recruits horse and foot ... he fetches parks of artillery
the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy
he knows how to arouse it ... he can make every word he speaks draw blood.
Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he
never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up
out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light ... he turns the pivot
with his finger ... he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily
overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections
and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith ... he spreads out his
dishes ... he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women. His
brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer ... he is judgment. He
judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless
thing. As he sees the farthest he has the most faith. His
thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In
the talk on the soul and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is
silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement....he
sees eternity in men and women ...he does not see men and women
as dreams of dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul...it pervades the
common people and preserves them...they never give up believing and expecting
and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness
about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest
expressive genius. The poet
sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and
perfect as the greatest artist....The power to destroy or remould is freely
used by him but never the power of attack.
What is past is past. If he does not expose superior models and prove himself
by every step he takes he is not what is wanted. The
presence of the greatest poet conquers...not parleying or struggling or
any prepared attempts. Now
he has passed that way see after him! there is not left any vestige of
despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a
nativity or color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell...and no
man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness of sin.
The
greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into
any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and
life of the universe. He is a seer....he is individual...he is complete
in himself....the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do
not....
The
land and sea, the animals fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs,
the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes... but folks
expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always
attach to dumb real objects....they expect him to indicate the path between
reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough..probably
as well as he....The
poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses
to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life
of these and much else and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that
it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity
that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The
rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical
laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on
a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges
and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency
and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are
not independent but dependent.
All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain...
The
known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He
consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and
which possible contingency of fortunate or misfortunate and persuades daily
and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his
burning progress to contact and amorous joy.... The
best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ...the
pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes
and sound.
Without
effort and without exposing in the least how it is done the
greatest poet brings the spirit of any
or all events and passions and scenes and persons some
more and some less to bear
on your individual character as you hear or read....
The art of art, the glory of expression
and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better
than simplicity....nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness.
To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give
all subject their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon.
But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude
and insousiance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of
the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless
triumph of art. ...The greatest poet has less
a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts 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. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is....What I experience or portray
shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You
shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.....
The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy....
The
American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging
competitors.. They
shall be kosmos..without monopoly or secresy..glad to pass any thing to
any one..hungry for equals night and day. They shall not be careful of
riches and privilege....they shall be riches and privilege....they shall
perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that
confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth
of himself....
A great poem is for ages and ages in common
and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and for
a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a woman.
A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning..
Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest
satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full? To no
such terminus does the greatest poet bring...he brings neither cessation
or sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action.
Whom he takes he takes with fire sure grasp into
live regions previously unattained.....
....The
proof of a poet is that his
country absorbs him as affectionately as he
has absorbed it. 1855
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