The poets have always lived in an ideal world, and that ideal world has always been far better than the real world. As a consequence, they have forever roused, not simply the imagination, but the energies--the enthusiasm of the human race. The great poets have been on the side of the oppressed--of the downtrodden. They have suffered with the imprisoned and the enslaved, and whenever and wherever man has suffered for the right, wherever the hero has been stricken down--whether on field or scaffold--some man of genius has walked by his side, and some poet has given form and expression, not simply to his deeds, but to his aspirations. From the Greek and Roman world we still hear the voices of a few. The poets, the philosophers, the artists and the orators still speak. Countless millions have been covered by the waves of oblivion, but the few who uttered the elemental truths, who had sympathy for the whole human race, and who were great enough to prophesy a grander day, are as alive to-night as when they roused, by their bodily presence, by their living voices, by their works of art, the enthusiasm of their fellow men. Think of the respectable people, of the men of wealth and position, those who dwelt in mansions, children of success, who went down to the grave voiceless, and whose names we do not know. Think of the vast multitudes, the endless processions, that entered the caverns of eternal night--leaving no thought--no truth as a legacy to mankind! The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world. IV. Walt Whitman is in the highest sense a believer in democracy. He knows that there is but one excuse for government--the preservation of liberty; to the end that man may be happy. He knows that there is but one excuse for any institution, secular and religious--the preservation of liberty; and that there is but one excuse for schools, for universal education, for the ascertainment of facts, namely, the preservation of liberty. He resents the arrogance and cruelty of power. He has sworn never to be tyrant or slave. He has solemnly declared: I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. This one declaration covers the entire ground. It is a declaration of independence, and it is also a declaration of justice, that is to say, a declaration of the independence of the individual, and a declaration that all shall be free. The man who has this spirit can truthfully say: I have taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown. I am for those that have never been master'd. There is in Whitman what he calls "The boundless impatience of restraint"--together with that sense of justice which compelled him to say, "Neither a servant nor a master am I."