We make a mistake when we demand of Whitman what the other poets give us,--studies, embroidery, delicate tracings, pleasing artistic effects, rounded and finished specimens. We shall understand him better if we inquire what his own standards are, what kind of a poet he would be. He tells us over and over again that he would emulate the great forces and processes of Nature. He seeks for hints in the sea, the mountain, in the orbs themselves. In the wild splendor and savageness of a Colorado canyon he sees a spirit kindred to his own. He dwells fondly, significantly, upon the amplitude, the coarseness, and what he calls the sexuality, of the earth, and upon its great charity and equilibrium. "The earth," he says, "does not withhold; it is generous enough:-- "The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either, They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print. They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth--I utter and utter!" * * * * * "The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out. Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out." He says the best of life "Is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer," and that the earth affords the final standard of all things:-- "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth, No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account unless it compares with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the earth." No one can make a study of our poet without being deeply impressed with these and kindred passages:-- "The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race. The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets, The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer, (Not every century, nor every five centuries has contain'd such a day, for all its names.) * * * * * "All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.