That woman who passionately clung to me. Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous. * * * * * (Be not impatient--a little space--Know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land, Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.) And this was the man who had been blamed for his utter lack of "the romantic attitude towards women!" But Whitman was no light singer of casual empty love-lyrics; he was of sterner stuff than that. No dainty dolce affettuoso I, Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived. * * * * * As breakfast passed, he spoke but little to his companions. His ordinary mood of "quiet yet cheerful serenity," lay gently on him, and he was content to sit almost silent, emanating that radiant power, that "effluence and inclusiveness as of the sun," which none could fail to note in him. When addressed, he only replied with the brief monosyllable "Ay? Ay?" (which he pronounced _Oy? Oy?_), and which, slightly inflected to answer various purposes, served him for all response. [Illustration: I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, Listen'd long and long.... (_Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking_).] The meal was not yet over, for most of the family, when Whitman, rising abruptly with that startling _brusquerie_ which occasionally offended his friends, observed "Ta-ta!" to everybody in general and departed--"as if he didn't care if he never saw us again!" remarked one of the young men. He left the house and strolled down the green lane, to a wide wooded hollow, where the stream called Timber Creek went winding among its lily-leaves beneath the trees. Here Whitman had found, a year before, "a particularly secluded little dell off one side by my creek ... filled with bushes, trees, grass, a group of willows, a straggling bank and a spring of delicious water running right through the middle of it, with two or three little cascades. Here (he) retreated every hot day" (_Specimen Days_),--and here, while the summer sun drew sweet aromatic odours from the tangled water-mints and cresses, he proceeded slowly now, carrying a portable chair, and with his pockets filled with note-books; for, as he truly avowed, "Wherever I go, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or travelling, I _must_ take notes." He was about to make sure of a morning's unmitigated delight,--in the spot where he sought, "every day, seclusion--every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners."