Once Paumanok, When the snows had melted--when the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. * * * * * Till of a sudden, May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest, Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appear'd again. And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea, And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather.... Yes, when the stars glisten'd, All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop'd stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears * * * * * I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long.... (_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_). But now the Stafford family were assembled at breakfast and Walt limped in to join them. Courteously and simply he greeted the various members of the household,--the dark, silent, diligent Methodist father,--the spiritually-minded yet busy-handed mother,--the two young fellows, the married daughter and her little ones. He was the most domesticated, least troublesome of inmates, and his "large sweet presence" imparted something to the homely breakfast-table, something of benignity and tranquillity, which it had lacked before his entrance. "The best man I ever knew," Mrs. Stafford called him. Her sons adored him; and her grandchildren were almost like his own, in the love and confidence with which they curled themselves upon his great grey knee when the meal was over. For his affection for children, his sense of fatherhood, was a predominant trait of Whitman's character. Lonely, since his mother's death, he had lived as regards the closer human relationships: lonely, in this sense, he was doomed to remain. A veil of secrecy hung over his past life, which none had ever ventured to lift. Rumours of a lost mate, as in the song of the Alabama bird upon the shore,--of children whom he never could claim,--hints of harsh fates and imperious destinies, occasionally penetrated that close-woven curtain of silence which covered his most intimate self. But only in his poems had he voiced his loneliness, and that with the tenderest poignancy of yearning for "better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade"....