[Illustration: THE LUMBERMEN'S CAMP. Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping, The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work, The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin. (_Song of the Broad-Axe_).] And thus, all Whitman's finest poems have a processional air, like the evolution of some great symphony--a pageantry of sound, so to speak, which whirls one forward like a leaf upon a resistless stream. Sometimes he is superbly triumphant, as in his inaugural _Song of Myself_: With music strong I come--with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play great marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Sometimes he translates the sonorities of the air into immortal effluences of meaning: Hark, some wild trumpeter--some strange musician, Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.... Blow, trumpeter, free and clear--I follow thee, While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day, withdraw; or he blends all sorts and conditions of beautiful resonance into, surely, the strangest yet loveliest love-song ever yet set down: I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass'd the church, Winds of autumn, as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful, I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head, Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear. But now the precious hour had arrived, which to Whitman spelt revivification and rejuvenescence above all others: the time when, stripped of all externals, he became the very child of Mother Earth. In his own description of the process: "A light south-west wind was blowing through the tree-tops. It was just the place and time for my Adamic air-bath.... So, hanging clothes on a rail near by, keeping old broadbrim straw on head and easy shoes on feet ... then partially bathing in the clear waters of the running brook--taking everything very leisurely, with many rests and pauses ... slow negligent promenades on the turf up and down in the sun ... somehow I seemed to get identity with each and everything around me, in its condition. Perhaps the inner, never-lost rapport we hold with earth, light, air, trees, etc., is not to be realized through eyes and mind only, but through the whole corporeal body." (_Specimen Days._)