No other great
American poet had indulged in realism as extreme as this:--
"The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down."
Whitman says boldly:--
"And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue."
He discarded ordinary poetic meter, because it seemed to lack the rhythm of
nature. It is, however, very easy for a poet to cross the line between
realism and idealism, and we sometimes find adherents of the two schools
disagreeing whether Whitman was more realist or idealist in some of his
work, for instance, in a line or verse unit, like this, when he says:--
"That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
again, and ever again, this soil'd world."
[Illustration: IDENTITY
(Drawing by Elihu Vedder)]
The fact that not all the later eastern poets were realistic needs
emphasis. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, perhaps the most noted successor of New
England's famous group, was frequently an exquisite romantic artist, or
painter in miniature, as these eight lines which constitute the whole of
his poem, _Identity_, show:--
"Somewhere--in desolate wind-swept space--
In Twilight-land--in No-man's-land--
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
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