Neuropathical Urnings are not hinted at in any passage of his works. As his friend and commentator Mr. Burroughs puts it: "The sentiment is primitive, athletic, taking form in all manner of large and homely out-of-door images, and springs, as anyone may see, directly from the heart and experience of the poet." This being so, Whitman never suggests that comradeship may occasion the development of physical desires. But then he does not in set terms condemn these desires, or warn his disciples against them. To a Western boy he says:-- "If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently seek lovers, Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine." Like Plato, in the Phædrus, Whitman describes an enthusiastic type of masculine emotion, leaving its private details to the moral sense and special inclination of the person concerned.[66] The language of "Calamus" (that section of "Leaves of Grass" which is devoted to the gospel of comradeship) has a passionate glow, a warmth of emotional tone, beyond anything to which the modern world is used in the celebration of the love of friends. It recalls to our mind the early Greek enthusiasm--that fellowship in arms which flourished among Dorian tribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric Hellas. Nor does the poet himself appear to be unconscious that there are dangers and difficulties involved in the highly-pitched emotions he is praising. The whole tenor of two mysterious compositions, entitled "Whoever you are, Holding me now in Hand," and "Trickle, Drops," suggests an underlying sense of spiritual conflict. The following poem, again, is sufficiently significant and typical to call for literal transcription:-- "Earth, my likeness! Though you look so impressive, ample and spheric here, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth; For an athletic is enamoured of me--and I of him, But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth, I dare not tell it in words--not even in these songs." The reality of Whitman's feeling, the intense delight which he derives from the personal presence and physical contact of a beloved man, find expression in "A Glimpse," "Recorders ages hence," "When I heard at the Close of Day," "I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak growing," "Long I thought that Knowledge alone would content me,"[67] "O Tan-faced Prairie Boy," and "Vigil Strange I kept on the Field one Night."[68]