* * * * *
Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and
sentenced."
In these four lines, he states simply what must be the moving impulse of a
democratic government if it is to survive. Here is the spirit that is
to-day growing among us, the spirit that forbids child labor, cares for
orphans, enacts model tenement laws, strives to regenerate the slum
districts, and is increasing the altruistic activities of clubs and
churches throughout the country. But these verses will not submit to iambic
or trochaic scansion, and their form is as strange as a democratic
government was a century and a half ago to the monarchies of Europe. Place
these lines beside the following couplet from Pope:--
"Self-love and Reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire."
Here the scansion is regular, the verse polished, the thought undemocratic.
The world had long been used to such regular poetry. The form of Whitman's
verse came as a distinct shock to the majority.
Sometimes what he said was a greater shock, as, for instance, the line:--
"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
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