"
For a considerable time many people knew Whitman by this one line alone.
They concluded that he was a barbarian and that all that he said was
"yawp." Although much of his work certainly deserved this characterization,
yet those who persisted in reading him soon discovered that their
condemnation was too sweeping, as most were willing to admit after they had
read, for instance, _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd_, a poem that
Swinburne called "the most sonorous nocturn yet chanted in the church of
the world." The three _motifs_ of this song are the lilac, the evening
star, and the hermit thrush:--
"Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."
In the same class we may place such poems as _Out of the Cradle Endlessly
Rocking_, where we listen to a song as if from
"Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle."
Whitman also wrote in almost regular meter his dirge on Lincoln, the
greatest dirge of the Civil War:--
"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.
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