Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/283

Rh the odes on Shakespeare and Bryant and Washington, which resemble his blank verse both in artistic perfection and in imagination excelled by no contemporary poet. Whitman's genius is prodigal and often so elemental, whether dwelling upon Whitman's cosmic mood. his types of the American people, or upon nature animate and inanimate in his New World, or upon mysteries of science and the future, that it at times moves one to forego, as passing and inessential, any demur to his matter or manner. There is no gainsaying the power of his imagination,—a faculty which he indulged, having certainly carried out that early determination to loaf, and invite his soul. His highest mood is even more than elemental; it is cosmic. In almost the latest poem of this old bard, addressed "To the Sunset Breeze" (one fancies him sitting, like Borrow's blind gypsy, where he can feel the wind from the heath), he thus expressed it:—

Lanier is another of the American poets distinguished by imaginative genius. In his Some other poets. case this became more and more impressible by the sense of elemental nature, and perhaps more subtly alert to the infinite variety within the unities of her primary forms. Mrs. Stoddard's poetry, as yet uncollected, is imaginative and original, the utterance of moods that are only too