Towards democracy

518 Towards Democracy

{ never met with any other book (with the exception perhaps of Beethoven’s sonatas) which I could read and re-read as I could this one. I find it difficult to imagine what my life would have been without it. ‘Leaves cf Grass” “filtered and fibred” my blood: but I do not think I ever tried to imitate it or its style. Against the inevitable drift out of the more classic forms of verse into a looser and freer rhythm I fairly fought, contesting the ground (“kicking against the pricks”) inch by inch during a period of seven years in numerous abortive and mongrel creations—till in 1881 I was finally compelled into the form (if such it can be called) of “Towards Democracy.” I did not adopt it decause it was an approximation to the form of “Leaves of Grass.” Whatever resemblance there may be between the rhythm, style, thoughts, constructions, etc., of the two books, must I think be set down to a deeper similarity of emotional atmosphere and intension in the two authors—even though that similarity may have sprung and no doubt largely did spring out of the personal influence of one upon the other. Anyhow our temperaments, standpoints, antecedents, etc., are so entirely diverse and opposite that, except for a few points, I can hardly imagine that there is much real resemblance to be traced. Whitman’s full-blooded, copious, rank, masculine style must always make him one of the world’s great originals —a perennial fountain of health and strength, moral as well as physical. He has the amplitude of the Earth itself, and can mo more be /#ought away than a mountain can. He often indeed reminds one of a great quarry on a mountain sidethe great shafts of sunlight and the shadows, the primitive face of the rock itself, the power and the daring of the men at ‘work upon it, the tumbled blocks and masses, materials for éndless buildings, and the beautiful tufts of weed or flower on