what you yourselves have left! On your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, must we mete and measure for today and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet democratic despots of the West! By points like these we, in reflection, token what we mean by any land's or people's genuine literature. And thus 10 compared and tested, judging amid the influence of loftiest products only, what do our current copious fields of print, covering in manifold forms, the United States, better, for an analogy, present, than, as in 15 certain regions of the sea, those spreading, undulating masses of squid, through which the whale swimming, with head half out, feeds? Not but that doubtless our current so- 20 called literature (like an endless supply of small coin) performs a certain service, and may be, too, the service needed for the time (the preparation service, as children learn to spell). Everybody reads, and 25 truly nearly everybody writes, either books, or for the magazines or journals. The matter has magnitude, too, after a sort. But is it really advancing? or, has it advanced for a long while? There is 30 something impressive about the huge editions of the dailies and weeklies, the mountain-stacks of white paper piled in the press-vaults, and the proud, crashing, ten-cylinder presses, which I can 35 stand and watch any time by the half hour. Then (though the States in the field of imagination present not a single first-class work, not a single great literatus), the main objects, to amuse, to titillate, to pass 40 away time, to circulate the news, and rumors of news, to rhyme and read rhyme, are yet attain'd, and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry of writers, especially novelists', success (so-call'd), is 45 for him or her who strikes the mean flat, average, the sensational appetite for stimulus, incident, persiflage, etc., and depicts, to the common caliber, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as 50 we see the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often laggard 55 - but they last forever. Of what is called the drama, or dramatic presentation in the United States, as now put forth at the theaters, I should say it deserves to be treated with the same gravity, and on a par with the questions of ornamental confectionary at public din5 ners, or the arrangement of curtains and hangings in a ball-room-nor more, nor less. Of the other, I will not insult the reader's intelligence (once really entering into the atmosphere of these Vistas) by supposing it necessary to show, in detail, why the copious dribble, either of our little or well-known rimesters, does not fulfil, in any respect, the needs and august occasions of this hand. America demands a poetry that is bold, modern, and all-surrounding and kosmical, as she is herself. It must in no respect ignore science or the modern, but inspire itself with science and the modern. It must bend its vision toward the future, more than the past. Like America, it must extricate itself from even the greatest models of the past, and, while courteous to them, must have entire faith in itself, and the products of its own democratic spirit only. Like her, it must place in the van, and hold up at all hazards, the banner of the divine pride of man in himself (the radical foundation of the new religion). Long enough have the People been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to no such poems. Erect, inflated, and fully selfesteeming be the chant; and then America will listen with pleased ears. Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light at last, be probably usher'd forth from any of the quarters currently counted on. To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American poetic expression (eluding those highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes, and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodox publishers causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted not to chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely artificial gossamer delicacy) lies sleeping far away, happily unrecog nized and uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-writers, the talkers and critics of the saloons, or the lecturers in the colleges lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in some Western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennesee repartee, or stump-speech or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the Carolinas or in some slang or local song or allusion of the Manhattan, Boston, Phila delphia or Baltimore mechanic —or up in the Maine woods or off in the hut of the California miner, or crossing the Rocky Mountains, or along the Pacific railroad or on the breasts of the young farmers of the Northwest, or Canada, or boatmen of the lakes. Rude and coarse nursing-beds, these; but only from such beginnings and stocks, indigenous here, may haply arrive, be grafted, and sprout, 10 in time, flowers of genuine American aroma, and fruits truly and fully our own. I say it were a standing disgrace to these States-I say it were a disgrace to any nation, distinguish'd above others by 15 the variety and vastness of its territories, its materials, its inventive activity, and the splendid practicality of its people, not to rise and soar above others also in its original styles in literature and art, and its a own supply of intellectual and esthetic masterpieces, archetypal, and consistent with itself. I know not a land except ours that has not, to some extent, however small, made its title clear. The Scotch 25 have their born ballads, subtly expressing their past and present, and expressing character. The Irish have theirs, England, Italy, France, Spain, theirs. What has America? With exhaustless mines 30 of the richest ore of epic, lyric, tune, picture, etc., in the Four-Years' War: with indeed, I sometimes think, the richest masses of material ever afforded a nation, more variegated, and on a larger scale-35 the first sign of proportionate, native, imaginative Soul, and first-class works to match, is (I cannot too often repeat) so far wanting. Long ere the second centennial arrives, 40 there will be some forty to fifty great States, among them Canada and Cuba. When the present century closes, our population will be sixty or seventy millions. The Pacific will be ours, and the 45 Atlantic mainly ours. There will be daily electric communication with every part of the globe. What an age! What a land! Where, elsewhere, one so great? The individuality of one nation must then, as 50 always, lead the world. Can there be any doubt who the leader ought to be? Bear in mind, though, that nothing less than the mightiest original non-subordinated SOUL has ever really, gloriously led, or ever can 55 lead. (This SOUL-its other name, in these Vistas, is LITERATURE.) In fond fancy leaping those hundred years ahead, let us survey America's work, poems, philosophies, fulfilling prophecies, and giving form and decision to best ideals. Much that is now un5 dreamed of, we might then perhaps see establish'd, luxuriantly cropping forth, richness, vigor of letters and of artistic expression, in whose products character will be a main requirement, and not merely erudition or elegance. Present literature, while magnificently fulfilling certain popular demands, with plenteous knowledge and verbal smartness, is profoundly sophisticated, insane, and its very joy is morbid. It needs tally and express Nature, and the spirit of Nature, and to know and obey the standards, I say the question of Nature, largely considered, involves the questions of the esthetic, the emotional, and the religious and involves happiness. A fitly born and bred race, growing up in right conditions of out-door as much as in-door harmony, activity and development, would probably, from and in those conditions, find it enough merely to live and would, in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, etc., and in the countless common shows, and in the fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness with Being suffused night and day by wholesome ecstasy, surpassing all the pleasures that wealth, amusement, and even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can give. In the prophetic literature of these States (the reader of my speculations will miss their principal stress unless he allows well for the point that a new Literature, perhaps a new Metaphysics, certainly a new Poetry, are to be, in my opinion, the only sure and worthy supports and expressions of the American Democracy). Nature, true Nature, and the true idea of Nature, long absent, must, above all, become fully restored, enlarged, and must furnish the pervading atmosphere to poems, and the test of all high literary and esthetic compositions. I do not mean the smooth walks, trimm'd hedges, poseys, and nightingales of the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history, the kosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light as a feather, though weighing billions of tons. Furthermore, as by what we now partially call Nature is intended, at most, only what is entertainable by the physical world needs, a class of bards who will, now and ever, so link and tally the rational physical being of man with ensembles of time and space, and with this vast and multiform show, Nature, surrounding him, ever tantalizing him, equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as to essentially, harmonize, satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, now scared away by science, must be restored, brought back by the same power that caused her departure - restored with new sway, deeper, wider, higher than ever. Surely, this universal ennui, this coward fear, this shuddering at death, these low, degrading views, are not always to rule the spirit pervading future society, as it has the past, and does the present. What the Roman Lucretius sought most nobly, yet all too blindly, negatively to do for his age and its successors, must be done positively by some great coming literatus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully poet, will absorb whatever science indicates, with spiritualism, and out of them, and out of his own genius, will compose the great poem of death. Then will man indeed confront Nature, and confront time and space, both with science, and con amore, and take his right place, prepared for life, master of fortune and misfortune. And then that which was long wanted will be supplied, and the ship that had it not before in all her voyages will The Galaxy, 1867-1868. In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far, and make great poems of death. The poems of life are great, but 20 there must be the poems of the purport of life, not only in itself, but beyond itself. I have eulogized Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal, Shakspere, etc., and acknowledged their inestimable 25 value. But (with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects, of the secondmention'd), I say there must, for future and democratic purposes, appear poets (dare I to say so?) of higher class even 30 than any of those-poets not only possessed of the religious fire and abandon of Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud characters as in Shakspere, but consistent with the 35 have an anchor. Hegelian formulas, and consistent with modern science. America needs, and the TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, Far, far at sea, After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, The limpid spread of air cerulean, Thou also reappearest. 10 Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, London Athenæum, 1876. PRAYER OF COLUMBUS A batter'd, wrecked old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home. Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, I take my way along the island's edge, Venting a heavy heart. I am too full of woe! Haply I may not live another day; I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep, Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee, Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee, Thou knowest my years entire, my life, My long and crowded life of active work, not adoration merely; Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and visionary meditations, Thou knowest how before I commenced I devoted all to come to Thee, Thou knowest I have in age ratified all those vows and strictly kept them, Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee. All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee, My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee Intentions, purports, aspirations none, leaving results to Thee. O I am sure they really came from Thee, The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will, The potent, felt. interior command, stronger than words, A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep, By me and these the work so far accomplish'd, By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands uncloy'd, unloos'd By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the known. The end I know not, it is all in Thee, Or small or great I know not- haply what broad fields, what lands, Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee, Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to reaping-tools, Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may bud and blossom there. One effort more, my altar this bleak sand; That Thou O God my life hast lighted, With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees, My terminus near, The clouds already closing in upon me, The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, I yield my ships to Thee. My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd, Let the old timbers part, I will not part, I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me, Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving? I know not even my own work past or present, And these things I see suddenly, what mean they? Harper's Monthly, March, 1874. PATROLING BARNEGAT Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running. Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, The American, June, 1880. 5 10 |