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 world. Most of us ordinary people feel it when we are young and happy, but in Whitman it is a perennial incitement to benediction. No other American poet communicates so abundantly the sheer joy of living:

Add this impression of a prairie sunset:

And that exquisite line:

Then for his note in compassion, read "Reconciliation," remembering that here is no feigned emotion, but the very spirit of the man bending above some Rebel soldier in the old Washington days—the bearded angel of spiritual Reconstruction: