Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in the world by JSTOR. Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid-‐seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-‐commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-‐jstor/individuals/early-‐ journal-‐content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-‐for-‐profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
THE POETRYOF THE FUTURE. as it may seem, the topmost proof of a race is its own Strange The presence of that, or the absence, each tells its born poetry. rose or lily, as the ripened fruit to a story. As the flowering or how fine the trunk, or the the peach, no matter apple tree, or and here branches waits sine qua non rich the foliage, copious at last. The stamp of entire and finished greatness to any nation, to the American among the rest, must be sternly with Republic it stands for in held till it has expressed itself, and put what the blossom of original, first-class poems. No imitations will do? And though no esthetiJc worthy the present condition or future seems to have been even outlined certainties of the New World or has been generally called for, or thought in men's minds,* I am clear that until the United States have just such needed, in the highest artistic fields, their definite and native expressers even intellectual mere political, geographical, and wealth-forming, and predominant, will constitute eminence, however astonishing and likened it) a more and more expanded (as I have before or no and with little soul. perhaps brain, body, well-appointed the grim truth as we may, and ward off with outward Sugar-coat to the mental inward per plausible words, denials, explanations, A barren void exists. is plain. ception of the land this blank and maturer For the meanings purposes of these States are not and physical of a new world of politics merely, the constructing in range comforts for the million, but even more determinedly, of a new world of democratic science and the modern, with If the latter were not literature. and imaginative sociology to form their only permanent tie and carried out and established of avail. be little would first-named the hold, * to her to Miss in response said earnestly Emerson In 1850, Bremer, " We have not yet any poetry : No, you must not be too good-natured. praises The poet of America of our world. the mind can he said to represent which he comes, he will When is not yet come. sing quite differently."
196
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
land are twined, as weft with the poems of a first-class With warp, its types of personal peculiar, character, of individuahty, its own shapes, man's and woman's, native, its own physiognomy, forms, and manners, fully justified under the eternal laws of all forms,
all manners,
all
times.
in America to inaugu I say the hour has come for democracy rate itself in the two directions specified,?autochthonic poems and expressers of itself, its spirit alone, to radiate personalities,?born in subtle ways, not only in art, but the practical and familiar, in in and the transactions between persons, employers employed in the army and navy, and and wages, and sternly business them. revolutionizing a scope profound and radical and I find nowhere enough, or The for individuals. either aggregates enough, objective a to and in America of and worthily poetry fill, identity thought essence fill, the great void, and enhance these aims, involves the and integral facts, real and spiritual, of the whole land, the whole of bones is to the congeries the great sympathetic body. What and joints, and heart and fluids and nervous system, and vitality, launching forth in time and space a human being constituting, an such relation, and no less, stands true immortal soul?in aye, or to the nation. to the single personality poetry Here our thirty-eight States stand to-day, the children of as they are, heirs of a very old and, young past precedents, One or two points we will consider, out of the .myriads estate. of the British The feudalism themselves. Islands, presenting and by his legitimate followers, Walter illustrated by Shakespeare, Scott and Alfred Tennyson, with all its tyrannies, superstitions, veins, poems, superb and heroic permeating evils, had most It almost seems as if only manners?even its errors fascinating. in Europe, like slavery in our own South, could that feudalism outcrop types of tallest, noblest personal character yet?strength and devotion and love better than elsewhere?invincible courage, Shake is where the spines of all. Here aspiration, generosity, a service I named and the others have incalculably speare perform and everything to our America. Politics, literature, precious is to find else centers at last in perfect personnel (as democracy the is unrivaled?here the same as the rest) ; and here feudalism of pre rich and highest-rising lessons it bequeaths us?a mass which we are to work over, cious, though foreign, nutriment,
THE
POETRY
OF THE FUTURE.
197
and enlarge, and present in Western again popularize, growths. Still, there are pretty grave and anxious drawbacks, jeopar on the subject, a little Let us give some reflections dies, fears. but starting from one central thought, and returning fluctuating, Two or three curious results may plow up. As there again. seem most in the astronomical laws, the very power that would turns out to be latently conservative of deadly and destructive longest, vastest future births and lives. Let us for once briefly examine the just-named authors solely It may be, indeed, that we shall from aWestern point of view. use the sun of English current stars literature, and the brightest as pegs to hang some cogitations of his system, mainly on, for home inspection. and
of the passions at their stormiest depicter and dramatist though ranking high, Shakespeare outstretch, (spanning the arch wide enough) is equaled by several, and excelled by the best old in portraying But the mediaeval Greeks lords (as iEschylus). and barons, the arrogant port and stomach so dear to the inmost human heart (pride !pride !dearest, perhaps, of all?touching us, closest of all?closer than love), he stands too, of the States the world. alone, and I do not wonder he so witches From first to last, also, Walter Scott and Tennyson, like Shake we exhale that of caste which Americans have speare, principle come on earth to destroy. criticism on the Waverly Jefferson's novels was that they turned and condensed brilliant but entirely false lights and glamours over the lords, ladies, courts, and aristo cratic institutes of Europe, with all their measureless infamies, and then left the bulk of the suffering, down-trodden people con in the shade. Without to answer this temptuously stopping or to repay any part of the debt of hornet-stinging criticism, thanks I owe, in common with every American, to the noblest, romancer ever that cheeriest I healthiest, lived, pass on to Tenny son and his works. here of a very high (perhaps the highest) order of Poetry verbal melody, clean and pure, and almost always exquisitely like the tuberose, to an extreme of sweetness?some perfumed, times not, however, but even then a camellia of the hot-house, never a common flower?the verse of elegance and high-life, and a smack of outdoors amid all its super-delicatesse yet preserving As
198
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
and outdoor folk?the old Norman lordhood quality here, too, crossed with that Saxon fiber from which twain the best current stock of England that revels above all things springs?poetry in traditions of knights and chivalry, and deeds of derring-do. The odor of English social life in its highest melan range?a the choly, affectionate, very manly, but dainty breed?pervading books like an invisible the traditions, the scent; the idleness, a the of the like ennui; stately yearning mannerisms, love, spinal marrow inside of all; the costumes, old brocade and satin; the old houses and furniture,?solid oak, no mere veneering,?the secrets everywhere; the verdure, the ivy on the walls, moldy the the moat, the English landscape outside, fly in the buzzing sun inside the window pane. Never one democratic page; nay, not a line, not a word; never free and na?ve poetry, but involved, when the theme is ever so labored, quite sophisticated?even love (a shell, a bit of sedge, the commonest simple or rustic of the rhyme all passage between a lad and lass), the handling the scholar and conventional the showing gentleman; showing too, the attache of the throne, and most excellent, too ; Laureate, than the dedication "To the nothing better through the volumes and fine dedication, other the at the "These to Queen" beginning, his Memory77 preceding (Prince Alberts), "Idylls of the King.77 three that now, Such for an off-hand summary of the mighty by the women, men, and young folk of the fifty millions given these States by their late census, have been and are more read than all others put together. and the other current We hear it said, both of Tennyson of Great Britain, illustrator of literary leading Carlyle,?as in France,?that Victor Hugo not one of them is personally toward America; friendly or admirant indeed, quite the reverse. than theirs) can That they (and more good minds S'importe. arch thrown by the United States not span the vast revolutionary over the centuries, fixed in the present, launched to the endless that they cannot stomach the high-life-below-stairs color future; our so measure all status social far?the and ing poetic genteel less viciousness of the great radical republic, with its ruffianly and elections; its loud, ill-pitched voice, utterly re nominations its fights, verb the whether agrees with the nominative; gardless those errors, eructations, dishonesties, audacities; repulsions, fearful and varied and long continued storm and stress stages
THE
POETRY
199
OF THE FUTURE.
college-bred mind) wherewith (so offensive to the well-regulated more powerful nationalities out block time and nature, history, than the past, and to upturn it and press on to the future ;?that and fathom all this, I say, is it to be they cannot understand of our thirty-eight the gestation at? wondered Fortunately, on its course, on more to come) proceeds empires (and plenty immense and absolute as the globe, scales of area and velocity even of great poets and and, like the globe itself, quite oblivious means of no to be oblivious can afford we But thinkers. by them.
same of feudalism, its castles, courts, etiquettes, wars, or the spirits of them hovering in However they, personalities. the air, might scowl and glower at such removes as current Kansas or Kentucky life and forms, the latter may by no means repudiate all the evil that it did, we get, or leave out the former. Allowing almost here and to-day, a balance of good out of its reminiscence beyond price. The
interior chyle of our I content, then, that the general from and nourished be should by wholesale supplied republic as these ? Let me answer sources such and antagonistic foreign that question briefly : Years ago I thought Americans ought to strike out separate, I think of their own in highest literature. and have expressions are so still, and more decidedly than ever. But those convictions now strongly points (perhaps the tempered by some additional I see results of advancing age, or the reflections of invalidism). as part of all, fuses inseparably with that this world of the West, ever new, yet old, old the East, and with all, as time does?the Am
human
race?"
the
same
subject
continued,"
as
the
novels
of
our
If we are not to hos had it for chapter-heads. grandfathers of the old civili and the receive complete inaugurations pitably to the their small scale and largest, broadest scale, change zations, what on earth are we for ? the rude, business in America, of practical The currents our all their and of facts coarse, tussling daily experiences, lives, and tincture of this entirely different need just the precipitation even feudalistic, anti-repub fancy world of lulling, contrasting, On the enormous of our lican poetry and romance. outgrowth of and the rank self-assertion unloosed humanity individualities, recherch? influences. here, may well fall these grace-persuading,
200
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
and communities We first require that individuals shall be free; then surely comes a time when it is requisite that they shall not be too free. Although to such result in the future I look mainly for a great poetry native to us, these importations till then will have to be accepted, such as they are, and thankful they are no worse.
The inmost spiritual currents of the present time curiously revenge and check their own compelled tendency to democracy, and absorption in it, by marked to the past?by remi leanings in poems, plots, operas, novels, to a far-off, contrary, niscences deceased world, as if they dreaded the great vulgar gulf tides of Then what has been fifty centuries growing, working to-day. in, and accepted as crowns and apices for our kind, is not going to be pulled down and discarded in a hurry. It is, perhaps, time we paid our respects directly to the honor able party, the real object of these preambles. But we must make reconnaissance a little further still. Not the least part of our lesson were to realize the curiosity and interest of friendly foreign " our how and looks to them. situation American poetry,77 experts,* " " is the poetry of apt pupils, but it is says the London Times,7' t afflicted from first to last with a fatal want of raciness. Bryant has been long passed as a poet by Professor but in Longfellow; with all his scholarly grace and tender feeling, the Longfellow, can Mr. Lowell defect is more apparent than it was in Bryant. humor when polities inspire his muse ; overflow with American than a but in the realm of pure poetry he is no more American verse Millers has and Newdigate prize-man. fluency Joaquin and harmony, but as for the thought, his songs of the movement in Holland.77 sierras might as well have been written * A
"Has America any great ago I saw the question, produced as prize-suhject for the competition of some university in I saw the item in a foreign note of it; and made paper, Europe. hut heing taken down with for a long season, and prostrated the paralysis, matter to get hold of any "been able since away, and I have never slipped or report nor to learn for for the prize, of the discussion, essay presented nor can I now remember certain whether there was any essay or discussion, poet ? Northern
few
"
years announced
It may have the place. or Scandinavian German tin a long Chilien Bryant.
or possibly Heidelberg. Upsala, can give particulars. I think it was
been
and prominent
editorial,
at
the
time,
on
the
Perhaps in 1872. death
some
of William
THE Unless
OF THE FUTURE.
POETRY
in a certain
very
slight
201 the
contingency,
"Times'*
says: an exotic, "American from its earliest to its latest seems verse, stages, an exuberance of gorgeous but no principle of reproduction. blossom, is the very note and test of its inherent want. Great poets are tortured their flowers of fancy gathered and gummed and massacred down by having Jiortus siccus of an anthology. American in the show better in an poets than in the collected of their works. volumes Like their audience, anthology
with That
they have literature.
been
unable
of the vast attraction orbit of English "but it would be primeval forest, generally to detect on the that very hard they were writing ... of the Hudson rather than on those of the Thames. banks In fact, they the English tone and air and mood have and are caught only too faithfully, as readily as if cultivated by the superficiaUy English intelligence accepted born. they were English to a certain disappointment "Americans themselves confess that a literary to resist
the
talk of the They may from internal evidence
so diffused and intelligence have not taken [as in the United curiosity States] at the point at which America literature has received up English it, and car and developed it with an independent ried it forward But like reader energy. come like poet. show the effects of having into an estate Both they have not a diction A nation earned. of readers has required of its poets and symmetry of form equal to that of an old literature like that of Great Britain, which is also which,
theirs. No however ruggedness, however their culture, superficial
racy, would read Byron
The English critic, though a gentleman is friendly withal, evidently not altogether is jealous) and winds up by saying : which
the English "For was not English
to have language but American,
been
enriched
would
have
be tolerated and Tennyson."
by
circles
and a scholar, and satisfied (perhaps he
with been
a national a treasure
poetry beyond
price."
With which, as whet and foil, we shall proceed more definitely certain no doubt willful opinions.
to ventilate
at present unnoticed the great masterpieces of the Leaving flow of antique, or anything from the middle ages, the prevailing poetry for the last fifty or eighty years, and now at its height, has been and is (like the music) an expression of mere surface melody, within narrow limits, and yet, to give it its due, perfectly satisfy of the ear, of wondrous ing to the demands charm, of smooth and easy delivery, and the triumph of technical art. Above all and select. It shrinks with aversion from things it is fractional the sturdy, the universal, and the democratic.
202
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
The poetry of the future (the phrase is open to sharp criti and is not and I will is to but cism, me, significant, satisfactory use it)?the of at free the the future aims poetry expression of emotion (which means far, far more than appears at first), and to arouse and initiate more Like all than to define or finish. or indirect reference continually modern it has direct tendencies, to the reader, to you or me, to the central identity of everything, the mighty Ego. (Byron's was a vehement dash, with plenty of lurid but and introverted amid all its impatient democracy, ; not at all the fitting, lasting song of a grand, secure, magnetism It is more akin, likewise, to outside life and free, sunny race.) to the antique feeling), real sun and (returning mainly landscape and shores?to the elements themselves?not gale, and woods to a good tale of sitting at ease in parlor or library Hstening Character, a feature far above style them, told in good rhyme. or polish,?a feature not absent at any time, but now first brought to the fore,?gives Its poetry. stamp to advancing predominant : same to the born sister, music, influences already responds " all
The
tends
music towar
of the i this
ism totally unlike suave melodies."
even the later Verdi's, Wagner's, Gounod's, a vocal of poetic and demands expression emotion, or Bellini's for Eossini's required splendid roulades, present,
free
that
a departure Is there not even now, indeed, an evolution, from the masters? and unsurpassable Venerable after their as kind as are the old works, and always unspeakably precious more than any other people), is it too studies (for Americans much to say that by the shifted combinations of the modern mind verse of has changed ? first-class the whole underlying theory " termed the says classic,77 during period Sainte-Beuve, Formerly, " when literature was governed by recognized rules, he was con sidered the best poet who had composed the most perfect work, the most beautiful the most agree poem, the most intelligible, able to read, the most complete in every respect,?the iEneid, the a fine tragedy. else is wanted. Gerusalemme, To-day, something For us, the greatest poet is he who in his works most stimulates and reflection, who excites him the most the readers imagination The greatest poet is not he who has done the himself to poetize. best ; it is he who suggests the most ; he, not all of whose mean to desire, to ing is at first obvious, and who leaves you much to to much turn.77 in your study, complete explain,
THE
POETRY
OF THE FUTURE.
203
The fatal defects our American singers labor under are sub ordination of spirit, an absence of the concrete and of real patriot aesthetic contagion a queer friend ism, and in excess that modern taste for "The immoderate calls the beauty disease. of mine into mon "leads men beauty and art," says Charles Baudelaire, imbued with a frantic greed for the In minds strous excesses. of truth and justice disappear. There balances all the beautiful, is a lust, a disease of the art faculties, which eats up the moral like
a cancer."
there is plenty of Of course, by our plentiful verse-writers Nor need we go far for a tally. of a kind. service performed, We see, in every polite circle, a class of accomplished, good natured persons (" society," in fact, could not get on without them), mix egg fully eligible for certain problems, times, and duties?to to decide whether the broken the spectacles, nog, to mend stewed eels shall precede the sherry or the sherry the stewed eels, with monk, Jew, Turk, to eke out Mrs. A. B.'s parlor-tableaux or what not, and to gen Romeo, Prospero, Caliban, Puck, lover, and and contribute adapt their flexibilities gracefully erally to the world's service. for real But talents, in those ranges, or physical, as they might crises, great needs and pulls, moral well have never been born. Or the accepted notion of a poet would appear to be a sort of a kind of spiced ideas, male odalisque, singing or piano-playing or toying late hours at entertain second-hand reminiscences, rooms scent. I think I haven't in fashionable with stifling ments, seen a new-published simple lyric in ten years. healthy, bracing, Not long ago, there were verses in each of three fresh monthlies, from leading authors, and in every one the whole central motif of a marriageable the melancholiness serious) was (perfectly young woman who didn't get a rich husband, but a poor one ! Besides its tonic and at fresco physiology, such as relieving on the of a more take future the in character will this, poetry the old stock important respect. Science, having extirpated fables and superstitions, is clearing a field for verse, for all the a hundred-fold arts, and even for romance, ampler and more with the new principles behind. ad wonderful, Republicanism vances over the whole world. Liberty, with Law by her side, will one day be paramount?will at any rate be the central idea. Then only?for all the splendor and beauty of what has been, or the polish of what is?then only will the true poets appear, and VOL.
CXXXTI.?no.
291.
14
204
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
Not the satin and patchouly the true poems. of to-day, not the of the butcheries and wars of the past, nor any fight glorification between Deity on one side and somebody else on the other?not Milton, not even Shakespeare's plays, grand as they are. Entirely different and hitherto unknown classes of men, being authorita tively called for in imaginative literature, will certainly appear. is hitherto most lacking, perhaps most absolutely What indicates has been hurried on through the future. time by Democracy as the revolution tides and winds, resistless measureless of the and rapid. But in the highest walks globe, and as far-reaching of art it has not yet had a single representative worthy of it any where upon the earth. had real bard a task more fit for sublime ardor and Never the songs these States have already genius than to sing worthily Their origin, Washington, indicated. of ?76, the picturesqueness old times, the war of 1812 and the sea-fights ; the incredible and breadth of area?to fuse and compact rapidity of movement the East and West, to express the native the South and North, to California, and from scenes, from Montauk forms, situations, to the Rio Grande?the out on such the Saguenay working such a swift and mighty scales, and with play of gigantic of man and light and shade, of the great problems changing far ahead of the stereotyped plots, or gem-cutting, freedom,?how or tales of love, or wars of mere ambition ! Our history is so above all. What full of spinal, modern, subjects?one germinal of Hectors and the ancient siege of Ilium, and the puissance art and literature, and warriors proved to Hellenic Agamemnon7s all art and literature since, may prove the war of attempted of 1861-5 to the future aesthetics, drama, romance, secession poems of the United States. itself provide Nor could utility practically anything more a couple of gener to the hundred millions serviceable who, than the limits just named, inhabit within ations hence, will national poetry? of a sane, sweet, autochthonous the permeation must I say of a kind that does not now exist? but which, I fully believe, will in time be supplied on scales as free as Nature's that we of the States are the most elements. (It is acknowledged and materialistic people ever known. My own money-making we are emo the is that most while this, theory, fully accepting and people also.) poetry-loving tional, spiritualistic,
THE POETRY
205
OF THE FUTURE.
Infinite are the new and orbic traits waiting to be launched forth in the firmament that is, and is to be, America. Lately I have wondered whether the last meaning of this cluster of thirty eight States is not only practical fraternity among themselves? the only real union (much nearer its accomplishment, too, than for fraternity over the whole globe? appears on the surface)?but that dazzling, pensive dream of ages ! Indeed, the peculiar glory of our lands, I have come to see, or expect to see, not in their geo or republican nor wealth or products, nor greatness, graphical or naval power, nor special, eminent names in any military to shine with, or outshine, foreign department, special names in similar
more
departments,?but
and
more
in
a
vaster,
saner,
more closer and closer not only uniting splendid Comradeship, the American States, but all nations, and all humanity. That, O poets ! is not that a theme worth chanting, striving for ? Why to the gauge of the round globe? not fix your verses henceforth the whole race 1 the most illustrious culmination of the modern may Perhaps thus prove to be a signal growth of joyous, more exalted bards of identically one in soul, but contributed adhesiveness, by every Let us, audacious, kind. start nation, each after its distinctive as ever, still deeply plan, seeking advan it. Let the diplomates, and to bind them, treaties between governments, tages, proposing on paper :what I seek is different, I would simpler. inaugurate from
America,
for
this
purpose,
new
formulas?international
I have
poems. thought that the invisible root out of which the grows, is Friendship. poetry deepest in, and dearest to, humanity I have thought that both in patriotism and song (even amid their shows past) we have adhered too long to petty limits, grandest and that the time has come to enfold the world. Not only is the human and artificial world we have established a radical departure from anything hitherto known,? in theWest not only men and politics, and all that goes with them,?but Nature is different. The itself, in the main sense, its construction, same old font of type, of course, but set up to a text never For Nature consists not only in itself composed or issued before. at but least in its subjective reflection objectively, just as much from the person, spirit, age, looking at it, in the midst of it, and beliefs of sends back the characteristic absorbing it?faithfully and readily gives again, the phys the time or individual?takes,
206
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
like a great elastic of any nation or literature?falls iognomy on a statue. or a on the like veil plaster molding face, is Nature? What were the elements, the invisible back What and eidolons of it, to Homer7s heroes, voyagers, gods? grounds iEneas ? Then to of VirgiPs all through the wanderings What the English-Norman characters?Hamlet, Lear, Shakespeare's to Voltaire, to was nature to Rousseau, ? What Romans the kings, In those the German Goethe in his little classical court gardens? of the King77?what in Tennyson (see the "Idylls presentments nature, inimitably described, sumptuous, perfumed, arras-and-gold better than any, fit for princes and knights and peerless ladies? and Merlin in their or peaceful, wrathful just the same?Vivien or Geraint and the of or death-float the Elaine, strange dalliance, himself and the Enid his of through disgraced long journey as in all the great the all the wife and horses), driving day wood, from Lucretius down, systems, treatises, art-works, imported that often a is there something pervading lurking, constantly to modern de will have to be eliminated, as not only unsuited to them, and dis and science in America, but insulting mocracy them. by proved Still, the rule and demesne of poetry will always be not the not the macrocosm, but microcosm; not exterior, but interior; about the imperative I haven7t said anything Nature, but Man. need of a race of giant bards in the future, to hold up high to and to eyes of land and race the eternal antiseptic models, confront and of all forms that wili dauntlessly greed, injustice, ness and tyranny whose roots never die (my opinion is, that after that is what first-class poets are for, as, all the rest is advanced, to their days and occasions, the Hebrew lyrists, Roman Juvenal, the old singers of India and the British Druids),? and doubtless to counteract immensest in ones, already looming dangers, we America?measureless in what call corruption politics; a mere mask of wax or lace; for ensemble, that most religion vast offensive of all earths shows?a and varied cankerous, and fat with of money and wealth prosperous community, mere and of business products ventures,?plenty intellectuality then utterly without the sound, prevailing, moral, and too,?and aesthetic health-action beyond all the money and mere intellect of the world. Is it a dream of mine that, in times tonc?me, West, South, East,
THE
POETRY
OF THE FUTURE.
207
North, will silently, surely arise a race of such poets, varied, yet one in soul?nor only poets, and of the best, but newer, larger and more than Judea's, meet passionate?to prophets?larger and penetrate those woes, as shafts of light the darknessu? As I write, the last fifth of the nineteenth century is entered upon, and will soon be waning. Now, and for a long time to come, the United States most need, to give purport, definiteness, what reason why, to their unprecedented material industrial wealth, and intel education by rote merely, great populousness products, is the central, spinal reality (or even the idea of lectual activity, band of native-born-and-bred it) of such a democratic teachers, of importations, tolerant and receptive but artists, litt?rateurs, our own to to the to entirely adjusted West, ourselves, days, combinations, differences, superiorities. purports, Indeed, I am fond of thinking that the whole series of concrete and political of the republic are mainly as bases and preparations triumphs for half a dozen first-rate future poets, ideal personalities, refer a not to or but to the four entire five ring special class, people, millions of square miles. of a nation Long, long are the processes of the development ality. Only to the rapt vision does the seen become the prophecy of the unseen.* so far attending Democracy, only to the real, is *
Is there not such if so?what And
a thing is it?
as the philosophy of American and poli history . . .Wise men say there are two sets of wills to nations and to persons?one set that acts and works from explainable motives?from emu intelligence, teaching, judgment, circumstance, caprice, etc.?and then another lation, greed, set, perhaps doep, hidden, unsuspected, than the first, refusing to be argued with, yet often more potent rising as it were on speakers, out of abysses, resistlessly urging doers, communities, to themselves?the to his fieriest race to pursue words?the unwitting poet . . . its loftiest ideal. the paradox of a nation's life and career, with Indeed, all its wondrous can probably from these contradictions, only be explained two wills, sometimes each operating in its sphere, in conflicting, combining races or in persons, and producing results. strangest Let us hope there is (indeed, can there be any doubt there is ?) this great, and abysmic second will also running the average unconscious, through and career of America. Let us hope nationality that, amid all the dangers of the present, and defections and through all the processes of the conscious it alone is the permanent and sovereign to carry on the will, force, destined New World to fulfill its destinies in the future?to those pursue resolutely tics?
to build, its past vision, age upon age; far, far beyond to form and fashion, and for the general and thought; type, men more noble, more athletic than the world has yet to gradually, seen; destinies,
present women firmly
208
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
not for the real only, but the grandest ideal?to justify the modern by that, and not only to equal, but to become by that superior to On a comprehensive the past. summing up of the processes and of the United States with reference and condition hitherto present to it, I say I am to their future and the indispensable precedents them, My point, below all surfaces, and subsoiling fully content. of a leading nationality are, is, that the bases and prerequisites on the first, at all hazards, freedom, worldly wealth and products largest and most varied scale, common education and intercommu through of just the stages nication, and, in general, the passing and crudities we have passed or are passing through in the United States.
factor of the whole business, and Then, perhaps, as weightiest of the future, it remains to be definitely of the main outgrowths of quite all avowed that the native-born middle-class population the United States,?the every average of farmers and mechanics city real, though latent and silent bulk of America, where,?the a friendly, free, religious happy, "blend, from all the States, with all varieties, most most not only the richest, pro inventive, nationality nationality?a but compacted indissolu has yet known, the world and materialistic ductive to and finish ample and solid bulk, and giving purpose bly, and out of whose like shall and all the spiritual surely rise, attributes, morals, it, conscience, on the earth, some group firm-footed above of edifices, yet scaling spires space and heaven. as they are, and greater far to be, the United Great too, are but a States, And here is, to my of creative process thought. steps in the eternal There is in that sub and certain their final perpetuity. justification, above law in the laws of the universe?and, all, in the moral process, and even vain and contemptible, that would make unsatisfactory, ?something and the proudest of war, all the triumphs the gains of peace, worldly grand now or that ever existed, eur of all the nations that have (ours included) series
of
mind, lime
all their worldly that we constantly career, however see, through except and bund and lame, attempts, according by all ages, all peoples, struggling to progress to their development, to reach, to press, on, to more on, and farther and more advanced ideals. is to be in my The glory of the republic of the United opinion, States, and of the and in of the modern the science, splendor that, emerging light are on the past, it is to cheerfully range itself, and its politics solidly based to come, under henceforth those universal them, and carry laws, and embody . . . And as only that individual becomes them out, to serve them. truly great he in a certain in himself who understands well sense, complete that, while life and laws is but a part of the divine, and whose eternal special scheme, are adjusted laws of nature, the general to move in harmonious relations with exist,
and
with especially last vitality of man
the moral or State?so
of all, and the and highest law, the deepest and so the United those nations, States, may
209
OF THE FUTURE.
THE POETRY
mass of material, never before or country, presents a magnificent on this It is earth. quite unexpressed material, by liter equaled insures the future of the ature or art, that in every respect the secession war I was with the armies, and During republic. and South, and studied them for saw the rank and file, North I have never had the least doubt about the country four years. in its essential future since. Meantime, we can (perhaps) do no better than saturate our to give imitations, yet a while, of the selves with, and continue aesthetic models, supplies, of that past and of those lands we spring Those
from.
wondrous
stores,
reminiscences,
floods,
currents
And let the sources be flow on, flow hither freely. enlarged, to include not only the works of British origin, as now, but stately and devout Spain, courteous France, profound Ger many, the manly Scandinavian lan.ds, Italy's art race, and always the mystic Orient. them
Let
the
become
only their
greatest relations
harmonious
and
weU the most by understanding continuous, entire humanity and history, and all their laws of Deity, aU with the creative through thought
with
and sublimed and future. to the amplitude of Thus will present, they expand and become and culminating illustrations parts of the splendid destiny, and of civilization. cosmos, or series of incidents, as an incident, the States how considering $To more
and
progress,
time, their
past,
accidentally along the path of time, and shaped by casual vast, coming as they happen to arise, and the mere result of modern improve emergencies I would of other nations and times, and lucky, ahead vulgar ments, finally or speculations as seeds, in the growth of our republic? these thoughts plant, and result of all the past?that culmination that it is the deliberate here, too, as in all departments of the universe, laws (slow and sure in acting, regular ever
slow
and
sure
and governed, and will in ripening) have controUed yet control or steered that those laws can no more be baifled clear of, or or any fortune or opposition, than the laws of winter and by chance, or darkness and light. moral and military of summing up of the tremendous perturbations and their results?and indeed of the entire hundred of the years our national from its inchoate to the down movement experiment,
and govern vitiated, summer, The 1861-5, past
of
; and
that they aU now launch States the United day (1780-1881)?is, with and humanity, the entirety of civilization and fairly forth, consistently sort the representative in main of them, the van, leading the fleet of leading on the seas and voyages and democratic, the modern of the future. Ana the real history of the United from that great con States?starting
present
vulsive the South perhaps
struggle
for
victorious, a thousand,
the unity, after all?is years
secession
only hence.?From
and war, concluded, triumphantly to be written at the remove of hundreds, my
"Memoranda
of the War."
!
210
THE NOBTH
AMEBICAN
BEVIEW.
and doubtless that at present, long ahead, a The course through would well become us. does it not wait the first glimpse of civilization, to its cosmic train of poems, bibles, structures, and India?Greece and Palestine and Rome perpetuities?Egypt so onward? The shadowy proces and mediaeval Europe?and sion is not a meager one, and the standard not a low one. All or precious in our kind seems to have trod the that is mighty road. Ah, never may America forget her thanks and reverence other life-blood, inspi for samples, treasures such as these?that use all in days, forever, through to-day, ration, sunshine, hourly out her broad demesne ! even the bafflers, head AU serves our New World progress, and squalls, cross-tides. Through many perturbations winds, and much backing and filling, the ship, upon the whole, makes has served, and for her destination. Shakespeare unmistakably best of the any. serves, may be, Remembering certain humility time of highest our contribution
For conclusion, a passing thought, a contrast, of him who, in cultus and stands for the Shakespearean my opinion, continues at the present day among all English-writing Tenny peoples?of as I taste the sweetness of I find it impossible, son, his poetry. the lush-ripening these lines, to escape the flavor, the conviction, and last honey of decay (I dare not call it rotten culmination, the mighty dramatist ness) of that feudalism which English noon in all and afternoon. the And how its of painted splendors those kings and nobles to poets ! Happy they are chanted?both be so sung, so told ! To run their course?to get their deeds and very pomp and dazzle of the shapes in lasting pigments?the sunset ! Meanwhile, democracy waits the coming of its bards in silence 7tis the twilight of the dawn. and in twilight?but Walt
Whitman.