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Grand as to-day's accumulative fund of poetry is, there is certainly
something unborn, not yet come forth, different from anything now
formulated in any verse, or contributed by the past in any land--
something waited for, craved, hitherto non-express'd. What it will be,
and how, no one knows. It will probably have to prove itself by itself
and its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity (this
new word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining all
lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold, from
God and the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustrating
all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point
of view, the entirety of imaginative literature's themes and results
as we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put
in statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast
fields and values and varieties left unreap'd? Of our own country,
the splendid races North or South, and especially of the Western and
Pacific regions, it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric
and Biblic elements are all untouch'd, left as if ashamed of, and only
certain very minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiously
sought and put in print, in short tales, "poetry" or books.

I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the
comfort of thousands--perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women's and
young men's--who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns
and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere
there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the
absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, the
songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full
assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will America
seek successfully to tune any superb national song unless the
heart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts--to be
return'd and echoed there again.

SHIP AHOY

In dreams I was a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas,
Sailing and ever sailing--all seas and into every port, or out
upon the offing,
Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big,
"Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice--if nothing more, some
friendly merry word at least,
For companionship and good will for ever to all and each.

FOR QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY

_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal
breakfast table May 24th, 1890_.

Lady, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Right
from the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless
blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)[45] A bunch of white and
pink arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, or
Potomac's woody banks.

Note:

[45] NOTE.--Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our
sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in
the treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and
sea) so dear to nations--very little I say do we realize that curious
crawling national shudder when the "Trent affair" promis'd to bring
upon us a war with Great Britain--follow'd unquestionably, as that war
would have, by recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all
the leading European nations. It is now certain that all this then
inevitable train of calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases
in the prepared and written missive of the British Minister, to
America, which the Queen (and Prince Albert latent) positively and
promptly cancell'd; and which her firm attitude did alone actually
erase and leave out, against all the other official prestige and Court
of St. James's. On such minor and personal incidents (so to call
them,) often depend the great growths and turns of civilization. This
moment of a woman and a queen surely swung the grandest oscillation
of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and doings of that period,
from foreign potentates and powers, might well be dropt in oblivion by
America--but never _this_, if I could have my way. W. W.

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

_Is there any such thing--or can there ever be?_

So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendous
and fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put down
some melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and from
my own points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named
"Hints toward Reforms," and the title-line was consider'd the best
part of all. In the present case I will give a few thoughts and
suggestions, of good and ambitious intent enough anyhow--first
reiterating the question right out plainly: American National
Literature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever
be? First to me comes an almost indescribably august form, the People,
with varied typical shapes and attitudes-then the divine mirror,
Literature.

As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer'd itself
than (going back to old Nile for a trope,) What bread-seeds of printed
mentality shall we cast upon America's waters, to grow and return
after many days? Is there for the future authorship of the United
States any better way than submission to the teeming facts, events,
activities, and importations already vital through and beneath them
all? I have often ponder'd it, and felt myself disposed to let it go
at that. Indeed, are not those facts and activities and importations
potent and certain to fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth,
irrespective of any attempt from individual guidance? But allowing
all, and even at that, a good part of the matter being honest
discussion, examination, and earnest personal presentation, we may
even for sanitary exercise and contact plunge boldly into the spread
of the many waves and cross-tides, as follows. Or, to change the
figure, I will present my varied little collation (what is our Country
itself but an infinitely vast and varied collation?) in the hope that
the show itself indicates a duty getting more and more incumbent every
day.

In general, civilization's totality or real representative National
Literature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not from
two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned
syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds
or advice of toploftical quarters--and indeed not at all from the
influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted,
after a sort)--but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more,
deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations
and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance--but is
not chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature in
America, New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region,
as a cynical fellow I know calls it) and the three or four great
Atlantic-coast cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate the
whole, will have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-root
of National Literature. America is become already a huge world
of peoples, rounded and orbic climates, idiocrasies, and
geographies--forty-four Nations curiously and irresistibly blent and
aggregated in ONE NATION, with one imperial language, and one unitary
set of social and legal standards over all--and (I predict) a yet to
be National Literature. (In my mind this last, if it ever comes, is
to prove grander and more important for the Commonwealth than its
politics and material wealth and trade, vast and indispensable as
those are.)

Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanent
sub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a great
nation more than anything else--more than laws or manners. (This is,
of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried but
ever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people's songs, and I don't care
who makes their laws.) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, and
surely show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebrate
their prevalent traits (these last the main things.) Homer grew out of
and has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admiration
for personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership,
inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates the
brilliancy of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalities
they produced, and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Bible
stand for the final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, and
of religious adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerful
than haughtiest kings or millionaires or majorities.

What the United States are working out and establishing needs
imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and
legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly state
it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary
equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the
political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd under
the conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or even
Europe, of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all.
We have not only to exploit our own theory above any that has preceded
us, but we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitely
broader themes.

When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd of
American boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, as
in my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west,
east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities
(especially New York and in Washington,) I have invariably found
coming to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be named
here for brevity's sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, and
Intelligence. (I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be--it is
a splendid resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather.)
Essentially these lead the inherent list of the high average personal
born and bred qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the
United States, as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely
these make the vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May
the destinies show it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole
future of our Commonwealth to the fact of these three bases. Need
I say I demand the same in the elements and spirit and fruitage of
National Literature?

Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words
_Noblesse Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion is
that this foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence and
permeate official America and its representatives in Congress,
the Executive Departments, the Presidency, and the individual
States--should be one of their chiefest mottoes, and be carried out
practically. (I got the idea from my dear friend the democratic
Englishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now dead. "The beautiful words
_Noblesse Oblige_," said she to me once, "are not best for some
develop'd gentleman or lord, but some rich and develop'd nation--and
especially for your America.")

Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep,
deep--not for trifles, or pretty seemings.) I am not sure but the
establish'd and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, needed
as old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness,
purity, sinlessness, &c.) has been undermined by nineteenth-century
ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal
development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if
there ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards
will be supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so
myself) they will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider.
Then the expanded scientific and democratic and truly philosophic
and poetic quality of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope
superior to all limitations, and essentially including just as well
the so-call'd evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, the
defective and abortions of the universe.

Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute than
the critics suppose) relish a well-hidden allusion or hint carelessly
dropt, faintly indicated, and left to be disinterr'd or not. Some
of the very old ballads have delicious morsels of this kind. Greek
Aristophanes and Pindar abounded in them. (I sometimes fancy the old
Hellenic audiences must have been as generally keen and knowing as any
of their poets.) Shakspere is full of them. Tennyson has them. It is
always a capital compliment from author to reader, and worthy the
peering brains of America. The mere smartness of the common folks,
however, does not need encouraging, but qualities more solid and
opportune.

What are now deepest wanted in the States as roots for their
literature are Patriotism, Nationality, Ensemble, or the ideas of
these, and the uncompromising genesis and saturation of these. Not the
mere bawling and braggadocio of them, but the radical emotion-facts,
the fervor and perennial fructifying spirit at fountain-head. And at
the risk of being misunderstood I should dwell on and repeat that a
great imaginative _literatus_ for America can never be merely good and
moral in the conventional method. Puritanism and what radiates from it
must always be mention'd by me with respect; then I should say, for
this vast and varied Commonwealth, geographically and artistically,
the puritanical standards are constipated, narrow, and non-philosophic.

In the main I adhere to my positions in "Democratic Vistas," and
especially to my summing-up of American literature as far as to-day is
concern'd. In Scientism, the Medical Profession, Practical Inventions,
and Journalism, the United States have press'd forward to the glorious
front rank of advanced civilized lands, as also in the popular
dissemination of printed matter (of a superficial nature perhaps, but
that is an indispensable preparatory stage,) and have gone in common
education, so-call'd, far beyond any other land or age. Yet the
high-pitch'd taunt of Margaret Fuller, forty years ago, still sounds
in the air: "It does not follow, because the United States print and
read more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the rest of the
world, that they really have therefore a literature." For perhaps
it is not alone the free schools and newspapers, nor railroads and
factories, nor all the iron, cotton, wheat, pork, and petroleum, nor
the gold and silver, nor the surplus of a hundred or several hundred
millions, nor the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, nor the last
national census, that can put this Commonweal high or highest on the
cosmical scale of history. Something else is indispensable. All that
record is lofty, but there is a loftier.

The great current points are perhaps simple, after all: first, that
the highest developments of the New World and Democracy, and probably
the best society of the civilized world all over, are to be only
reach'd and spinally nourish'd (in my notion) by a new evolutionary
sense and treatment; and, secondly, that the evolution-principle,
which is the greatest law through nature, and of course in these
States, has now reach'd us markedly for and in our literature.

In other writings I have tried to show how vital to any aspiring
Nationality must ever be its autochthonic song, and how for a really
great people there can be no complete and glorious Name, short of
emerging out of and even rais'd on such born poetic expression, coming
from its own soil and soul, its area, spread, idiosyncrasies, and
(like showers of rain, originally rising impalpably, distill'd from
land and sea,) duly returning there again. Nor do I forget what we all
owe to our ancestry; though perhaps we are apt to forgive and bear too
much for that alone.

One part of the national American literatus's task is (and it is
not an easy one) to treat the old hereditaments, legends, poems,
theologies, and even customs, with fitting respect and toleration, and
at the same time clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and
exploit our own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities,
with all it necessitates, and that our New-World circumstances and
stages of development demand and make proper. For American literature
we want mighty authors, _not_ even Carlyle- and Heine-like, born and
brought up in (and more or less essentially partaking and giving out)
that vast abnormal ward or hysterical sick-chamber which in many
respects Europe, with all its glories, would seem to be. The greatest
feature in current poetry (perhaps in literature anyhow) is the
almost total lack of first-class power, and simple, natural health,
flourishing and produced at first hand, typifying our own era. Modern
verse generally lacks quite altogether the modern, and is oftener
possess'd in spirit with the past and feudal, dressed may-be in late
fashions. For novels and plays often the plots and surfaces are
contemporary--but the spirit, even the fun, is morbid and effete.

There is an essential difference between the Old and New. The poems of
Asia and Europe are rooted in the long past. They celebrate man and
his intellections and relativenesses as they have been. But America,
in as high a strain as ever, is to sing them all as they are and are
to be. (I know, of course, that the past is probably a main factor in
what we are and know and must be.) At present the States are absorb'd
in business, money-making, politics, agriculture, the development of
mines, intercommunications, and other material attents--which all
shove forward and appear at their height--as, consistently with modern
civilization, they must be and should be. Then even these are but
the inevitable precedents and providers for home-born, transcendent,
democratic literature--to be shown in superior, more heroic, more
spiritual, more emotional, personalities and songs. A national
literature is, of course, in one sense, a great mirror or reflector.
There must however be something before--something to reflect. I
should say now, since the secession war, there has been, and to-day
unquestionably exists, that something.

Certainly, anyhow, the United States do not so far utter poetry,
first-rate literature, or any of the so-call'd arts, to any lofty
admiration or advantage--are not dominated or penetrated from actual
inherence or plain bent to the said poetry and arts. Other work, other
needs, current inventions, productions, have occupied and to-day
mainly occupy them. They are very 'cute and imitative and proud--can't
bear being left too glaringly away far behind the other high-class
nations--and so we set up some home "poets," "artists," painters,
musicians, _literati_, and so forth, all our own (thus claim'd.) The
whole matter has gone on, and exists to-day, probably as it should
have been, and should be; as, for the present, it must be. To all
which we conclude, and repeat the terrible query: American National
Literature--is there distinctively any such thing, or can there ever
be?

Note:

[46] The essay was for the _North American Review_, in answer to the
formal request of the editor. It appear'd in March, 1891.

GATHERING THE CORN

_Last of October_.--Now mellow, crisp, Autumn days, bright moonlight
nights, and gathering the corn--"cutting up," as the farmers call it.
Now, or of late, all over the country, a certain green and brown-drab
eloquence seeming to call out, "You that pretend to give the news, and
all that's going, why not give us a notice?" Truly, O fields, as for
the notice,

"Take, we give it willingly."

Only we must do it our own way. Leaving the domestic, dietary, and
commercial parts of the question (which are enormous, in fact, hardly
second to those of any other of our great soil-products), we will just
saunter down a lane we know, on an average West Jersey farm, and let
the fancy of the hour itemize America's most typical agricultural show
and specialty.

Gathering the Corn--the British call it Maize, the old Yankee farmer
Indian Corn. The great plumes, the ears well-envelop'd in their husks,
the long and pointed leaves, in summer, like green or purple ribands,
with a yellow stem line in the middle, all now turn'd dingy; the
sturdy stalks, and the rustling in the breeze--the breeze itself well
tempering the sunny noon--The varied reminiscences recall'd--the
ploughing and planting in spring--(the whole family in the field, even
the little girls and boys dropping seed in the hill)--the gorgeous
sight through July and August--the walk and observation early in the
day--the cheery call of the robin, and the low whirr of insects in the
grass--the Western husking party, when ripe--the November moonlight
gathering, and the calls, songs, laughter of the young fellows.

Not to forget, hereabouts, in the Middle States, the old worm fences,
with the gray rails and their scabs of moss and lichen--those old
rails, weather beaten, but strong yet. Why not come down from literary
dignity, and confess we are sitting on one now, under the shade of a
great walnut tree? Why not confide that these lines are pencill'd
on the edge of a woody bank, with a glistening pond and creek seen
through the trees south, and the corn we are writing about close at
hand on the north? Why not put in the delicious scent of the "life
everlasting" that yet lingers so profusely in every direction--the
chromatic song of the one persevering locust (the insect is scarcer
this fall and the past summer than for many years) beginning slowly,
rising and swelling to much emphasis, and then abruptly falling--so
appropriate to the scene, so quaint, so racy and suggestive in the
warm sunbeams, we could sit here and look and listen for an hour?
Why not even the tiny, turtle-shaped, yellow-back'd, black-spotted
lady-bug that has lit on the shirt-sleeve of the arm inditing
this? Ending our list with the fall-drying grass, the Autumn days
themselves,

Sweet days; so cool, so calm, so bright,

(yet not so cool either, about noon)--the horse-mint, the wild carrot,
the mullein, and the bumble-bee.

How the half-mad vision of William Blake--how the far freer, far
firmer fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"--would have
revell'd night or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American
corn fields! Truly, in color, outline, material and spiritual
suggestiveness, where any more inclosing theme for idealist, poet,
literary artist?

What we have written has been at noon day--but perhaps better still
(for this collation,) to steal off by yourself these fine nights,
and go slowly, musingly down the lane, when the dry and green-gray
frost-touch'd leaves seem whisper-gossipping all over the field in
low tones, as if every hill had something to say--and you sit or lean
recluse near by, and inhale that rare, rich, ripe and peculiar odor
of the gather'd plant which comes out best only to the night air. The
complex impressions of the far-spread fields and woods in the night,
are blended mystically, soothingly, indefinitely, and yet palpably to
you (appealing curiously, perhaps mostly, to the sense of smell.) All
is comparative silence and clear-shadow below, and the stars are up
there with Jupiter lording it over westward; sulky Saturn in the east,
and over head the moon. A rare well-shadow'd hour! By no means the
least of the eligibilities of the gather'd corn!

A DEATH-BOUQUET

_Pick'd Noontime, early January, 1890_

Death--too great a subject to be treated so--indeed the greatest
subject--and yet I am giving you but a few random lines about it--as
one writes hurriedly the last part of a letter to catch the closing
mail. Only I trust the lines, especially the poetic bits quoted,
may leave a lingering odor of spiritual heroism afterward. For I am
probably fond of viewing all really great themes indirectly, and by
side-ways and suggestions. Certain music from wondrous voices or
skilful players--then poetic glints still more--put the soul in
rapport with death, or toward it. Hear a strain from Tennyson's late
"Crossing the Bar":

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The floods may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Am I starting the sail-craft of poets in line? Here then a quatrain of
Phrynichus long ago to one of old Athens' favorites:

Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age,
Bless'd as a man, and as a craftsman bless'd,
He died; his many tragedies were fair,
And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.

Certain music, indeed, especially voluntaries by a good player, at
twilight--or idle rambles alone by the shore, or over prairie or
on mountain road, for that matter--favor the right mood. Words are
difficult--even impossible. No doubt any one will recall ballads or
songs or hymns (may-be instrumental performances) that have arous'd
so curiously, yet definitely, the thought of death, the mystic, the
after-realm, as no statement or sermon could--and brought it hovering
near. A happy (to call it so) and easy death is at least as much a
physiological result as a pyschological one. The foundation of it
really begins before birth, and is thence directly or indirectly
shaped and affected, even constituted, (the base stomachic) by every
thing from that minute till the time of its occurrence. And yet here
is something (Whittier's "Burning Driftwood") of an opposite coloring: