_Of course_ the city of Manhattan, as Mr. Whitman delights to call it, when regiments poured through it in the first months of the war, and its own sole god, to borrow the words of a real poet, ceased for a while to be the millionaire, was a noble spectacle, and a poetical statement to this effect is possible. _Of course_ the tumult of a battle is grand, the results of a battle tragic, and the untimely deaths of young men a theme for elegies. But he is not a poet who merely reiterates these plain facts _ore rotundo_. He only sings them worthily who views them from a height. Every tragic event collects about it a number of persons who delight to dwell upon its superficial points--of minds which are bullied by the _accidents_ of the affair. The temper of such minds seems to us to be the reverse of the poetic temper; for the poet, although he incidentally masters, grasps, and uses the superficial traits of his theme, is really a poet only in so far as he extracts its latent meaning and holds it up to common eyes. And yet from such minds most of our war-verses have come, and Mr. Whitman's utterances, much as the assertion may surprise his friends, are in this respect no exception to general fashion. They are an exception, however, in that they openly pretend to be something better; and this it is that makes them melancholy reading. Mr. Whitman is very fond of blowing his own trumpet, and he has made very explicit claims for his books. "Shut not your doors," he exclaims at the outset-- "Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries, For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring; A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers, And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades; The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything; A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect; But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm'd Libertad! It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air, With joy with you, O soul of man." These are great pretensions, but it seems to us that the following are even greater: "From Paumanok starting, I fly like a bird, Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, To Kanada, 'till I absorb Kanada in myself--to Michigan then, To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs (they are inimitable); Then to Ohio and Indiana, to sing theirs--to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas to sing theirs, To Tennessee and Kentucky--to the Carolinas and Georgia, to sing theirs, To Texas, and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere; To sing first (to the tap of the war-drum, if need be) The idea of all--of the western world, one and inseparable, And then the song of each member of these States."