These worse than prosaic lines do not require a critic to declare them devoid of any element of poetry. But on the other hand, that Whitman had genius is undeniable. His stalwart verse was often beautifully rhythmic and the style which he employed was nobly grand. Time will sift the wheat from the chaff, consuming the latter and preserving the golden grains of true poetry to enrich the future garners of our great American literature. No one of the many tributes to Lincoln, not even Lowell’s noble eulogy, is more deeply charged with exalted feeling than is Whitman’s dirge for Abraham Lincoln written after the death of the President, in which the refrain “O Captain, my Captain,” is truly beautiful. Whitman was no mean master in ordinary blank verse, to which he often reverted in his most inspiring passages. One of the chief charms of Whitman’s poetry consists in the fact that the author seems to feel, himself, always happy and cheerful, and he writes with an ease and abandon that is pleasant to follow. Like one strolling about aimlessly amid pleasing surroundings, he lets his fancy and his senses play and records just what they see or dictate. This characteristic, perhaps, accounts for the fact that his single expressions are often unsurpassed for descriptive beauty and truth, such as the reference to the prairies, “where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles.” Whoever used a more original and striking figure? Many of his poems strikingly remind one in their constructions (but not in religious fervor) to the Psalms of David. There is also often a depth of passion and an intoxication in his rhythmic chant that is found perhaps in no other writer, as this specimen, personifying night, will illustrate: “Press close, bare-bosomed night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! Night of the South wind! Night of the few larger stars! still, nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night!”