In the much misunderstood group of poems called "Children of Adam" the poet speaks for the male generative principle, and all the excesses and abuses that grow out of it he unblushingly imputes to himself. What men have done and still do, while under the intoxication of the sexual passion, he does, he makes it all his own experience. That we have here a revelation of his own personal taste and experiences may or may not be the case, but we have no more right to assume it than we have to assume that all other poets speak from experience when they use the first person singular. When John Brown mounted the scaffold in Virginia, in 1860, the poet says:-- "I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd, I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indifferent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds, you mounted the scaffold,"-- very near him he stood in spirit; very near him he stood in the person of others, but not in his own proper person. If we take this poet literally, we shall believe he has been in California and Oregon; that he has set foot in every city on the continent; that he grew up in Virginia; that every Southern State has been by turns his home; that he has been a soldier, a sailor, a miner; that he has lived in Dakota's woods, his "diet meat, his drink from the spring;" that he has lived on the plains with hunters and ranchmen, etc. He lays claim to all these characters, all these experiences, because what others do, what others assume, or suffer, or enjoy, that he appropriates to himself. "I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whipstocks. "Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels--I myself become the wounded person, My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. "I become any presence or truth of humanity here, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain. "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, It is I let out in the morning and barred at night. Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side." XIII