Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/129

Rh tone, beyond anything to which the modern world is used in the celebration of the love of friends. It recalls to our mind the early Greek enthusiasm—that fellowship in arms which flourished among Dorian tribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric Hellas. Nor does the poet himself appear to be unconscious that there are dangers and difficulties involved in the highly-pitched emotions he is praising. The whole tenor of two mysterious compositions, entitled "Whoever you are, Holding me now in Hand," and "Trickle, Drops," suggests an underlying sense of spiritual conflict. The following poem, again, is sufficiently significant and typical to call for literal transcription:—

Earth, my likeness!

Though you look so impressive, ample and spheric here, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth; For an athletic is enamoured of me—and I of him, But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth, I dare not tell it in words—not even in these songs."

The reality of Whitman's feeling, the intense delight which he derives from the personal presence and physical contact of a beloved man, find expression in "A Glimpse," "Recorders ages hence," "When I heard at the Close of Day," "I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak growing," "Long I thought that Knowledge alone would content me," "O Tan-faced Prairie Boy," and "Vigil Strange I kept on the Field one Night."