77 OJnrttcU Itttneraitg Ethrarg Stljattt, New Unrk FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 18S4-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library PS 3235.T77A8 At the graveside of Walt WhitmaniHarlei 3 1924 022 225 571 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022225571 GOOD-BYE AND HAIL WALT WHITMAN AT THE GRAVESIDE OF WALT WHITMAN: HARLEIGH, CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, MARCH 30th AND SPRIGS OF LILAC Sere tften Comrade, Breathe from these fragrant leaves love, exaltation, renewal: Through Him, through You, the Future. With reverent hand I gather and tie a few stray blossoms here In pledge eternal. 1892 Copyright, iSgi, by Horace L. Traubel Bilktcin & Son, PMladtlphia . . . " Some solemn imnwrtal birth; On the frontier$ to eyes impenetrable. Some tout is passing over J ^ Good-bye, Walt ! Good-bye from all you loved of Earth- Rook, tree, dumb creature, man and woman— To you their comrade human. The last assault Ends now, and now in some great world has birth A minstrel, whose strong soul finds broader wings. More brave imaginings. Stars crown the hlU-top where your dust shall lie. Even as we say good-bye, Good-bye, old Walt ! Edmund Ciarence Stedman. AT THE GRAVESIDE OF WALT WHITMAN Francis Howard Williams: These are the words of Walt Whitman : Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each. Sooner or later delicate death. Prais'd be the fathomless universe. For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love — but praise 'praise ! praise ! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet. Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome f Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalterifigly . Approach strong deliveress. When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead. Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee. Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death. From me to thee glad serenades. Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments And f eastings for thee. And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting. And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under m,any a star. The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know. And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veiVd death. And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. (7) 8 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide. Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, /float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death. THOMAS B. HARNED: We have come here to-day to entomb the body of Walt Whitman. We do not come in sadness. The great singer of death and immortality would have us utter only words of joy. We who have been the personal witnesses of his daily habit have no right to be silent. In the presence of death it becomes our duty to give testimony to the consistency of his life. I am charged with the special duty to speak for this city, in which he has lived for many years. He came to Camden in 1873, poor, paralyzed and sick. He had no thought then that his life would be prolonged. He had given his best years to the nursing of soldiers. No tongue can tell the extent of that ministry. With untiring fidelity he served his country. The history of the war presents no instance of nobler fulfillment of duty or sublimer sacrifice. The stalwart physique broke under the terrible strain, and this man came among us to spend his last days. For more than seventeen years he has been a familiar figure. During these long years of suffering no one has ever heard him utter a word of complaint. We know of his gentleness, his charity, his wisdom, his simplicity, his in- spiring and cheery voice, his majestic and venerable figure, his strong and classic face, cast in an antique mould. We have seen him on our streets, or frequenting the ferry-boats, or driv- ing over the neighboring roads. His companions have been from every walk of life, more especially among the poor and humble. He has taken a personal interest in the welfare of mechanics, deck-hands, car-drivers and other sons of toil. He At the Graveside of Walt Whitman p was the friend of children, and they all loved him. Although persons of eminence in literary and public life paid him hom- age, he cared more for the companionship of the common people. How fitting it is at this supreme juncture to proclaim his magnificent courage ! Every moment of his life tallied with the teachings of his books. He never bent the knee to wealth and power. His love of humanity was so broad that to him the ragged urchin was as dear as the learned scholar. He had a message for mankind, and what he had to say he said with fearlessness and without apology. He never flinched under the most adverse censure ; and when, in his declining years, he realized that he had been accepted and honored by the . greatest men of his own time, his modesty was childlike and serene. Let the day bring health or sickness, pleasure or pain, gain or loss, praise or censure, he ever journeyed "the even tenor of his way." A dominant trait of his character was gratitude, and it is because of his personal request to me that I speak to-day to return his thanks to the people of Camden for their many acts of kindness while he was one of their humble fellow- citizens. "Don't forget," he said, "to say, thanks, thanks, thanks." Year by year he grew feebler, and his ability to walk les- sened, until, at last, he could not leave the house ; but his ability to work, his serene faith, his joyous courage, never fal- tered or declined. His tenacity of purpose never weakened. No one could detect any intellectual sluggishness or the timidity of age. His keen insight and clear vision never failed him. I deem it my duty to mention two important facts : one, his POSITIVE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITV, and the Other his FEARLESS- NESS OF DEATH. With him immortality was not a hope nor a beautiful dream. /o At the Graveside of U'alt Whitman He believed that we all live in an eternal universe, and that man is as indestructible as his Creator. His views of reli- gion have been misunderstood. He was tolerant of the opin- ions of others, and recognized the good in all religious sys- tems. His philosophy was without the limitation of creed, and included the best thought of every age and clime. This faith in the immortality of identity remained to the last, and he gladly welcomed death as the " Usherer, Guide at last to all." We who have visited him in his sickness know of his utter fearlessness of death. He who sang the immortal death carol waited for ' ' lovely and soothing death " with the serenity of a child. His life-work is finished. The consecration is complete. We say we have known him ; have any of us known him ? Does not such a life bafHe our understanding ? Camden will be best known and honored because it has known and honored Walt Whitman. In this beautiful and fitting burial-ground we place all of him that is mortal. Future generations will visit this shrine in their adoration of one of the world's immortals. FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS : These are the words of Confucius : All the living must die, and dying, return to the ground. . . The bones and flesh moulder away below, and hidden away, become the earth of the fields. But the spirit issues forth and is displayed on high in a condition of glorious bright- ness. These are the words of Gautama : The state that is peaceful, free from body, from passion, and from fear, where birth or death is not, — that is Nirvana, It is a calm wherein no wind blows. Nirvana is the completion and opposite shore of existence, At tke Graveside of U-alt IVhiiman n free from decay, tranquil, knowing no restraint, and of great blessedness. The wind cannot be squeezed in the hand, nor can its color be told. Yet the wind is. Even so Nirvana is. These are the words of Jesus the Christ : Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- ness ; for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. DANIEL G. BRINTON : Friends of the dead, comrades and lovers of him who has left us — We meet to bid farewell to him whose life and thoughts have forged the bonds between us. We feared that in midwinter he would have been taken from us ; but he abided until the flowers of spring had come to deck his sepulchre, and until the leaves of grass, typical to his soul of the mystic energy of nature, stretched out their tender fronds toward his tomb. His contending spirit has reached the end of the untried roads he loved to follow. Through sharp defeats and baffled crises he has fought out the fight, ever marching on with clear eyes fixed on the well-marked goal. His spirit has passed beyond the "frontiers to eyes impenetrable." The "dark mother, gliding near with soft feet," has taken this child to her sure-en winding arms, and laves him in the flood of her bliss. We stand on the hither shore, and our eyes have not force to search the dimness of the floating ocean into which he has journeyed. Let us turn to note the legacy he has left. 12 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman No idler was he, no dallier with the golden hours, but arduous, contentious, undissuadable and infinitely loving. He came bearing the burden of a Gospel, the Gospel of the Indi- vidual Man ; he came teaching that the soul is not more than the body, and that the body is not more than the soul, and that nothing, not God himself, is greater to one than one's self is. He asked no man to accept his teachings, or to become his disciple, or to call him master. His strong voice resounded above the heads of all high men, and over the roofs of the world. It challenged alike wealth and power, and want and death, proclaiming that man, the one man, the individual, every individual, has all rights and all powers, is the autocrat of the world, sole ruler of the universe — let him only enforce his claims and make good his title. His words are perpetual warnings to all sects and syndicates, to all leagues and orders which bind men's minds or muscles to the bidding of another, which make them slaves in theught or in action ; and a warning against that worse and commoner bondage to one's own self, to imbibed traditions, to cultivated fears, to accepted and self-forged shackles. He who would gain true freedom, who would feel soul and body stinging with a new, an electric life, the life of one's self, let him patiently, persistently seek the meaning of that legacy of verse left with us by him whom now we consign to the clasp of the tomb. Never did he fear that fatal and certain end. Idle, indeed, it was for Death to try to alarm him. Almost did it seem that to him, as to the mighty sage of Kapilavastu, the King of Ter- rors had given up his secret, and in his ear had whispered hints of cheer and joy. Death had come to him to mean the truth "without name," the " word unsaid," not to be found " in any dictionary, utterance, symbol," the creative sign, "the friend whose embracing " should awake him. At the Graveside of Walt Whitman /j Therefore he harbored no suspicion of death ; but he forgot not that his concern, and that of all men, is not with death, but with life ; not with that which cannot be said, but with that the saying and doing of which will help the weak and gladden the strong, lift the fallen and enlighten the thoughtful, spread robust love between men and tender sympathy among women. This was his practical mission. On the portal of the holiest shrine in ancient Greece were inscribed the words, " Know thyself" ; the message of " the Pilot of the Galilean Lake " was " Deny thyself" ; the iteration of this child of the doctrine of the inner light, whose mortal remains we now consign to the tomb, was " Be thyself" There is no conflict in these teachings. They are the evolu- tion of the self-same sentiment. They are all embraced in one line of him whom Walt Whitman in his strong and homely phrase called " the boss of us all " — " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power." Be thyself ; suffer neither the tyranny which comes from the assumptions of others, nor that which proceeds from thine own lower nature ; true to thyself, never canst thou be false to any one — ^to man, to woman, or to God. This was his teaching to whom we now bid farewell— the long, the timeless farewell. FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS : These are the words of the Koran : He it is who made the sun for a brightness and the moon for a light. . . . Verily, in the alternation of night and day, and in what God has created of the heavens and the earth, are signs unto a people who do fear. . . . Verily those who believe and do what is right, their Lord 14 At the Graveside of H^att H^itmtm guides them by their faith; beneath them shall rivers flow in the gardens of pleasure. These are the words of Isaiah : O Lord, I will praise thee; though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord fehovah is my strength and my song ; he also is become my salvation. These are the words of John : lam the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever believeth in me shall never die. RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE : My friends, this hour and place will be memorable for- ever, for here and now we consign to its rest all that was mortal of a great man, a man who has graved a deep mark on his age and who will cut a yet deeper furrow across the face of the future. ^here is this difficulty in speaking about Walt Whitman : He was so great, he stood so apart from, so far above other men, that when one who knew him attempts to depict him to those who did not, the reporter inevitably makes such claims as cause him to be charged with extravagant exaggeration.] Not only so, but on account of the greatness and especially of the universality of our friend even those who lived close about him, though conscious of remarkable qualities in the man, were almost never able to realize in any adequate degree the man himself. Over and above all ordinary greatness (greatness of per- ception, of intellect, of will, of moral qualities, of intuition, of spiritual exaltation and illumination, and of the power of keen and accurate expression— and all these greatttesses and many At the Graveside of Walt Whitman /j more he had), over and above all these he had in an eminent degree that crowning endowment, faculty, quality, or whatever it may be called, the possession of which causes a man to be picked out from the rest and set apart as an object of affection. In his own vivid language, "he has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs." Our very presence here to-day, many of us from distant States and provinces, testifies to the truth of what I say ; but had our hearts and lives adequate voices, many of them would tell far more emphatically of the place in them that has been taken by our dead friend ; for he, though a stranger, has been to many of us closer than the closest — more than all the rest. You know all this as well as I. All that I have said or can say is an old story. You, as well as I, know the place he occupies in the eyes of the world to-day, and the place he is to occupy in the future. You, as well as I, feel the place he has occupied in our hearts and lives. The deep sense of loss is present with you, as it is with me. And our grief to-day is scarcely lessened by the knowledge that the work of our friend is done and well done, his rest well earned, and that, though to our senses dead, yet, in reality, he more than ever before lives — and will live as long as the heart of humanity beats at the memory of great deeds and heroic lives and deaths. That I am not overwhelmed and crushed, either by our loss or by the gravity and greatness of this occasion, that I can stand here and speak calmly of our great friend who is gone — "I so fallible, so infinitely low before (his) mighty majestic spirit ; I so simple, (he) so august " — is cause of astonishment to myself, as it well may be to you. I am sustained by his strength far more than by my own. 1 have not known him, loved him and studied him a quarter of a century for nothing. i6 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman His trust in the essential friendliness to man of the infinite universe ; his calm and contented acceptance of all that is or that happens ; his absolute assurance that he and all of us came well and shall go well ; his conviction that death (" God's eternal, beautiful right hand," as he named it) is not an evil but a good ; in fine, his faith, intense, glowing, vital beyond the limits of any I have elsewhere known or read of, have been to me the great solace of my life, and are to-day my powerful and sufficient support. The old days in which his presence was so large a part of my life come back to me, and live constantly before me, enveloped in a haze of sadness (how could it be otherwise ?) ; but I do not lament or repine, I am tranquil and resigned. Whatever others may think or say, I (inspired and informed by the great soul which has just left us) have made up my mind that I shall not give in to this arrogant and masterful Time Spirit who desires to deceive and enslave us. I am not going for one instant to admit that Time, Death, or any other power or influence can take from us what we have once had. The good days of the past live yet, and will always live in the equally good days of the present and future. They do not die, they have not died, they are absorbed, transmuted, grow, are never lost. This universe is not the hollow nutshell containing the rot- ten kernel that so many make it. It is vital and infinite—" in vain I try to think how infinite." Infinite not in one way, nor two ways, but in an infinite number of ways. What ! the uni- verse not capable of satisfying our needs ? On the contrary, we are capable of feeling but a fraction of the wants that it is able to satisfy. In this faith, learned from the friend whom we mourn, I rest satisfied and at ease. And if, dear friend, we now place in the tomb your body, At the Graveside of Walt IVhilman 77 that is after all a small matter. We do not entomb you nor bid you farewell. You will be with us as much as ever and more than ever. You will be to us as much as ever you were, and we can love you and serve you as well as if you were still what is called living. You are in fact, and more than ever, living ; as you have said : " The best of me then when no longer visible, for towards that I have been incessantly preparing." " That God shall take thee to his breast, dear spirit. Unto his breast be sure ; and here on earth Shall splendor sit upon thy name forever." You were no common man when you lived with us here on earth, and to-day you are no common spirit as you stand amid the innumerable host before the throne of God. In your own right you took rank here below as a supreme creative workman ; in your own right to-day you take rank among the supreme creative gods. There in the highest regions of the ideal for countless ages your work will go on moulding into higher and yet more noble forms the spirit of man. Your life for me lit up the past with an auroral splendor, and upon the world's future you will shine a glorious sun, but the present is darkened by the sombre shades of your setting. But our last word to you must not be a mournful one, what- ever pain we may feel. Let it rather be a cry of exultation that you were given to the world, and that we have known you and know you. That it has been my good fortune to know both yourself and your teaching fills me even this day with an unbounded sense of triumph ; and I rejoice to think and believe that there are others who know you and whose record shall help to carry on that knowledge to future generations. j8 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman All that is best in me I owe to you, and as long as I live I shall honor, thank and serve you. " And though no glance reveal thou doest accept My homage — thus no less, I proffer it And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest." FRANCIS HOWARD WILLIAMS : These are the words of the Zend Avesta : At the end of the third night, when the dawn appears, it seems to the soul of the faithful one as if it were brought amidst plants and a sweet-scented wind. And it seems to him, as if his own conscience were advancing to him in that wind, in the shape of a maiden fair, bright, white- arm ed,strong, . . . thick-breasted, beautiful of body, . . . as fair as the fairest things in the world. And the soul of the faithful one addressed her, asking : What maid art thou ? And she answered, lam thy own conscience. These are the words of Plato : Considering Die soul to be immortal and able to bear all evil and good, we shall always persevere in the road which leads upwards. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL: Again we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay a tribute to his greatness and his worth. I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower or greater than any of the sons of men. At the Graveside of Walt Whitman ig He came into our generation a free, untrammeled spirit, with sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human sympathy. One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast : " Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you." His charity was as wide as the sky, and wherever there was human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whit- man bent above it as the firmament bends above the earth. He was built on a broad and splendid plan— ample, without appearing to have limitations — passing easily for a brother of mountains and seas and constellations ; caring nothing for the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the shore, but giving himself freely with recklessness of genius to winds and waves and tides ; caring for nothing as long as the stars were above him. He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milli- ners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god. He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice ; uttered a song worthy of the great Republic. No man ever said more for the rights of humanity, more in favor of real democracy, of real justice. He neither scorned nor cringed, was neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and stars. He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He loved the clouds ; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the twi- light, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at the sea when the waves burst into the whitecaps of joy. He loved 20 At the Graveside of Walt W/hitman the fields, the hills ; he was acquainted with the trees, with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men. He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine passion that has built every home in the world ; that divine passion that has painted every picture and given us every real work of art ; that divine passion that has made the world worth living in and has given some value to human life. He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be ashamed of that which is natural. He was not only the poet of democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was the poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all the nations of the earth. He stretched out his hand and felt himself the equal of all kings and of all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter how high, no matter how low. He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all things, a man, and above genius, above all the snow-capped peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man. Greater than all is the true man, and he walked among his fellow-men as such. He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death, and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept all there is of life as a divine melody. You know better than I what his life has been, but let me say one thing : Knowing, as he did, what others can know and what they cannot, he accepted and absorbed all theories, all creeds, all religions, and believed in none. His philosophy was a sky that embraced all clouds and accounted for all At the Graveside of Walt Whitman 21 clouds. He had a philosophy and a religion of his own, broader, as he believed — and as I believe — than others. He accepted all, he understood all, and he was above all. He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart and brain. He had nothing to conceal. Frank, candid, pure, serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered, simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be understood yet, and that for which he was condemned — his frankness, his candor — will add to the glory and great- ness of his fame. He wrote a liturgy for mankind ; he wrote a great and splen- did psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity — the greatest gospel that can be preached. He was not afraid to live, not afraid to die. For many years he and death were near neighbors. He was always willing and ready to meet and greet this king called death, and for many months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night, waiting for the light. He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he looked upon the mountain tops, and when the mountains in darkness disappeared, he fixed his gaze upon the stars. In his brain were the blessed memories of the day, and in his heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life. He was not afraid ; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of the day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so, hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his journey's end. 22 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore, he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages seem now like strains of music blown by the " Mys- tic Trumpeter" from Death's pale realm. To-day we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss, one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human clay. Charitable as the air and generous as Nature, he was negli- - gent of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and should say. And I to-day thank him, not only for you but for myself, for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave words that he has said of death. He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the " dark valley of the shadow " holding Walt Whitman by the hand. Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound like trumpets to the dying. And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man's tomb. I loved him living, and I love him still. JOHN BURROUGHS :* When I saw the crowds of common people that flocked to Walt Whitman's funeral to-day, I said, how fit, how touching, all this is ; how well it would please him. It is from the com- mon people, the great army of workers, that he rises and speaks with such power and authority. His poems are all attuned to broad, universal humanity. * Not uttered at Harleigh. Mr. Burroughs was present, but did not speak. At the Graveside of Walt Whitman 23 It is not the specially endowed or privileged few that elicit his enthusiasm, but the average man and woman of trades and occupations. I remember once calling his attention to a story in a magazine, wherein some typical western frontier charac- ters were portrayed. He said, after reading it, that it would not do at all, that those large, homely, unlettered pioneer characters were not to be looked down upon or treated in the scornful, supercilious manner in which they were treated in this story. Small, perky men always treated them so, but great men never ; and he instanced Tristam Shandy as the proper way to do this thing. The atmosphere which his poems breathe is always that of common humanity — never that of select, specially cultured, privileged humanity. It may seem difficult at first to reconcile his atmosphere and attitude in this respect with our need at all times of keeping bright the ideal of a rare and high excellence. But there is really no discrepancy. The loftiest heroism, the deepest and purest spirituality, we know can go with commonplace every- day humanity. "Charity and personal force," the poet says, " are the only investments worth anything." We are all under the illusion, more or less, of the cultured, the refined ; yet we know that true greatness, true nobility, and strength of soul are quite apart from these things. " The older one grows," says Goethe, " the more one prizes natural gifts, because by no possibility can they be procured and stuck on." Matthew Arnold, in whose essay on Milton I find this remark quoted from Goethe, thought that one danger that threatened us in this country was that we were inclined to make a religion of the "average man," and therefore of losing the saving ideal of rare and high excellence. Whitman would lift the average man to a higher average, and still to a higher, without at all abating the qualities which he shares with universal humanity as it exists over and under all special advantages and artificial 24 At the Graveside of Walt Whitman selections. He says that one of the convictions that underlie his " Leaves " is the conviction that the " crowning growth of the United States is to be spiritual and heroic,"— a prophecy, I confess, which, with Hillism and Quayism threatening to over- ride us, does not seem very near fulfillment. "I announce a man or woman coming — perhaps you are the one, I announce a great individual, fluid as nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed, * I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spirit- ual, bold. And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation." Arnold said we had lost in the sense of distinction in this country, and found our great historical characters, like Lincoln, deficient in this quality. No doubt this is so; no doubt distinc- tion — that something about a man and his work that is like cut glass — does not flourish in democracies, where there are no classes ; it belongs to aristocracies. But there is another quality close akin which we cannot do without, and which such characters as Lincoln show. I mean elevation — elevation of thought and sentiment. It is a quality which goes with serious- ness and large views. It is very pronounced in both Whitman's poetry and prose. The spirit, especially in the prose writings, is lofty and uncompromising — almost arrogant and dictatorial at times. In the poems, where he gives fuller play to his com- passion and contentment, where he is less the critic and more the lover, the elevation is not of the kind that separates him from his reader ; it is like that of nature, in which we easily share. We feel that here is a soul whose range of thought and emotion are vastly beyond our own, and yet who in nowise stands aloof or apart from us, or from the lowest of his fellows. SPRIGS OF LILAC Alfred Tennyson, Isle of Wight {to y. H.y.,N. K) .■ I thank you for the papers and the photograph of brave old Walt with the two boys, and I was much touched by the value he set on my few unimportant letters to him. John Addington Symonds, Davos, Switzerland : It is a good and just thing, this which the love and service of Whitman has wrought for us all. It is what his spirit, if it soon arrives at a fuller knowledge of the whole, will appreciate as the best outcome of his teaching — this creation of comrade- ship, sensitive pulsation of emotion noble in its quality, between men so far apart. . . . He may die this year or that, and a great light will be extinguished ; but he will live forever in the words which he has left behind him, in the spirit he has created beneath the dry ribs of intellectual and academical death. . . . You do not know, I can never tell anyone, what Whit- man has been to me. ... I am not sure whether I have not abused the privilege of reading in that book. It revolutionized my previous conceptions, and made me another man. . I only know that he made me a free man : he helped me to work at my chosen trade, literature, for better or for worse, as I was made to do it ; but he also made me love my brethren, and seek them out with more perhaps of passion than he would himself approve. Working upon a nature so prepared as mine was, the strong agent of Whitman's spirit could hardly fail to produce a fermentation. ... I pour all this out upon you now because, while Whitman is lying on his death-bed, you must hear what one of bis disciples — a man sworn to him unto the grave— has to say about the effect of his prophecy. (^5) 26 sprigs of Lilac William Michael Rossetti, London : I need not tell you or Whitman with how much affection I regard his book, sent to me by him as if from out of the jaws of the tomb. The sight of it has incited me to re-read the entire book, old poems as well as new, and I once again feel, what I have never doubted since 1855, that Whitman is one of the great spirits of the age, destined to leave his mark on this and other centuries. 11. Buxton Forman, London: The grief we have all felt during these months, when we have thought of the sufferings of the good old man, has been en- hanced by our knowledge that you, our good friend and his faithful Achates, have also been suffering mental pain and eternal harassments. Now, however, the worst of this is over. Loving Walt as I do, and as you who knew him personally must do ten-fold more, it is impossible not to rejoice that his dreadful misery, so heroically borne, is ended and his im- mortality of fame begun. For yourself, I know you will still have much to do for Walt's affairs ; but with your indomitable and unlimited energy, this will be as nothing compared with what you have gone through. Therefore, on this solemn oc- casion, to use his own words, " I do not commiserate you, I congratulate you." I wish I could be at the funeral : wreaths go for nothing ; but I should like to bring to the solemn ceremo- nial the tribute of a bent head and a bowed mind. Edward Carpenter, Holmesfield : How happy it has been for us to think that you, his son after the spirit, were with him constantly to the very end — that he could always turn to you, as to some one he could speak to without effort, when more casual friends were only a burden to him. But what a grief to you — so long drawn out — to see him day by day, by almost imperceptible changes, drawn far- sprigs of Lilac 27 ther and farther away, amid clouds and storms of suffering, till he became the mere shadow of the friend you loved. Much as I realized his vitality and tenacity, I never thought that he would die so hard. He certainly seems to have experienced all of death — in himself as well as in others— as one may say he has experienced all of life. For his death I feel only thank- fulness. T. W. Rolleston, London: Certainly the German reception of Walt has shown more insight and comprehension than that of lands where his own language is spoken. Here, however, he is really becoming a classic now. A great change has taken place during the last dozen years or so. You find his books in the Free Public Libraries, for instance. I fear things in America are still back- ward. There is not enough genuine culture there, than which nothing so truly emancipates and ennobles the taste. I mean the culture gained from absorbing the spirit of the great Greek poets and thinkers — the men who faced the problem of the world and its phenomena in the freest and sincerest spirit ever known. Rudolf Schmidt, Copenhagen . To Walt Whitman my loving farewell. I have known him since January, 1872. J. W. Wallace, Anderton: I cannot help feeling sad at heart. And yet I know full well that our true tribute should be that of rejoicing for Walt's own sake, and of sacred pride and joy and triumph in the supreme victory he has won. It would seem like treason to Walt's memory to harbor sadness now that his warfare is ended and he has entered upon the transfers and promotions he looked forward to. A wonderful spectacle ! A crowning confirma- zS Sprigs of Lilac tion of his past life and teaching lay in the unruffled serenity and sweet content and cheer with which he accepted such terrible suffering, and the constant loving kindness of his great heart. I will speak words of thanksgiving and triumph, of strong and sacred joy, in the flawless victory of Walt's spirit over the direst foes — his simplicity and sweetness of perfect acceptance and faith, and the immortal assurance he has given to all future times of the supremacy of the soul and its native right to every good and to endless life. His fame is unmistakably begun, his influence is rapidly spread- ing in all sorts of unexpected quarters, and myriads will yet recognize his full stature and think of him with measureless love. The brave, pathetic figure of Socrates drinking the hem- lock has rivetted the attention and swelled the heart of ages. But Walt, greater than Socrates, will have a dearer renown. The great center of our wide comradeship has passed on into other spheres, but shame upon us if we loose each other's hands on that account. The ultimate victory of his work is inevitable as gravitation. My spirit is uplifted by a sense of his continued identity and triumph — a sense above conviction or any reasoning whatever — deeper and stronger — rather like actual consciousness, the sight of the soul. You, vvho were in closest intimacy with him, who saw every day the mastery of his strong and heroic soul over all physical wreck and dissolution, who saw his faith and love shining in clear splendor through all, cannot but feel that his release from physical conditions was only triumph — outlet to higher des- tinies. John Johnston, Bolton: Your last batch of letters, in which you say that you "hope for, yet dread the release which will take him from us for- ever," that "he speaks loving words of you all," that you al- most feel your sorrow " too keenly to bear up under it," and sprigs of Lilac zg that "he is unmistakably on the way to die," affected us most profoundly. The fatal cable message ! After the first shock a mighty calm overspread me. Ours is the glory and the privilege of having known and loved him, and, better still, of having been loved by him — our dear dead father and friend : for father, indeed, he was to me, and I feel a filial regard for him and mourn him as a son. He crossed the border line undaunted, and nothing in all his life so much became him as his death. Ellen M. O'Connor: Your telegram announcing the death of our beloved Walt was forwarded me at Boston, and I got it yesterday. The Sun- day papers had the news, and though it could fiot have been unlooked-for, it was at last a shock and surprise — death always is, even when you sit by the side of the dying. Walt is not out of my thoughts a moment. The old days and times come back in vividness and strength, and I live in the past again. Elizabeth Fair child: So the great soul has passed out of the trammels of the flesh. What he has done for freedom may the future of this country show. He has pointed the only way of safety to us : our gratitude as individuals and as a nation will be to walk therein. Though it is impossible for me to be with you to-morrow except in thought and sympathy, greet all his lovers for me. His voice, that can never be silent, will be my inspiration and my trumphet-call to the end of life. In the flux of modern literature he is like a beacon set on high to warn sailors of the dangers of the rocks and shallows of that sea of ink. He has known the flavor of his immortality, and the reward he most cared for, the "faithful love of com- rades," has always been his. Why should earth detain him ? Let the great soul pass ! 30 Sprigs of Lilac Herbert H. Gilchrist: I had just hnrriedly dipped into the inviting and satisfactory edition (in a becomingly simple dress) of Walt's glorious poems ; poems which seem every year to rise up in heroic out- line, in magnificent isolation. I cannot tell you how I was touched at receiving this gift from my friend at such a time. Sidney Morse : The end expected daily, monthly, yearly, has come finally, peacefully, happily. No regret. The work done. Everything as it should be, as he wished it to be. I think of him that summer — a picture for the eye, an encouragement for the heart of all who, passing, paused for a friendly word by the window, or by invitation entered through a shadowy hall to "have a bite" in the sunny little kitchen beyond. Never-to- be-forgotten days! One noon, Aunt Mary, tired from her "cleanin' up," but proud that she was "born the same year and month as he." Next day "some foreign gentleman" announced — but not a bit "foreign" after all when once he had crossed the threshold of the democrat and breathed the air of Mickle Street. Then, another noon, crowding the front doorway, a bevy of English girls, radiant, rosy, grouped against the sunlight — a beautiful tableaux as we see them from our places at the table. "Come right in, darlings," he cries. We move together a little at his command. Mrs. Davis, always ready for every such emergency, lays the plates, and those three English girls, who "must take in Walt Whitman if they miss Niagara," dine for the first time, it may be, in a kitchen, their joy in "actually being there" receiving no detri- ment from the surroundings. It was so with all comers. " It beats the dickens," said the old farmer from Georgia, "how soul and mind do triumph o'er all else." In a dream (if I may tell it) I met Whitman in company with others who appeared to be offering him greetings. They were on the shore of a sprigs of Lilac j/ vast ocean, the roar of which seemed to me like deep org£^^ music. " He has just come forth from the bath," I thought I heard one saying. " Here I am," said he, advancing to where I stood, speechless, gazing, "refreshed, renewed, for cycle on cycle — time no more ! " John Herbert Clifford: It was a great honor and sacred service to be of the friends chosen to bear Walt Whitman to his resting-place. For one, I have nothing but high, serene satisfaction in all I have seen and heard this day. Even if there be no multitude of fresh witnesses, now that he is gone — as Landor says that of the noble dead men sometimes cry recognition, just as they who say nothing of the sun's shining through the day exclaim, when he is gone, "How gloriously he set!" — still, coming years cannot but bring him to his own, his own to him. Dur- ing the last visit here of Matthew Arnold, I had the honor of a private word with him, and asked if he knew Whitman. "No," he said, with long languid drawl, suited to the slow-rising eye- brow, " I don't know Whitman, have not read his books. But can you tell me what Longfellow thought of him?" Upon this, when related to him, Walt's only comment was : "Ah? Well, I guess Arnold never did see me." There be, say some, whose gaze upon Whitman is too fixed, so that they become like Goethe's traveller, who looked at the sun till he could see nothing else. Whitman is a sun, but his shining shall be not less beneficent for loving eyes blinded by " vision splen- did," nor for blinking critic peepers that find him "dark with excess of light." William Sloane Kennedy : Yes, my heart is sad and heavy whenever I am alone now. " Walt is gone," I keep saying — as if there was narcotic or nepenthe to dull pain in that idea. All the day this conscious- S2 Sprigs of Lilac ness is with me, or rather I keep trying to realize that that pleasant, cheery voice is no more. My heart is sair, sair. I am reading his favorite book, The Border Minstrelsy— those. homely ballads of the people. We will keep the " flag of man " waving, now he is gone. The colors shall never go down that he has so bravely borne for thirty-seven years — not while you and I and all the rest live, nor ever, I believe. Hamlin Garland: The whole temper of the republic in letters, as in politics, is changing. Whitman's prophecies are being realized — not in the exact form in which he seemed to expect them, but in spirit and interior purpose. His enemies are almost gone. Those who know him admire and love him. Sylvester Baxter : Those of us who had the privilege of personal contact with dear old Walt were favored of centuries — but he will long con- tinue to speak to men as face to face. Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Have sent you a wreath for Whitman. I. Newton Baker: I have followed all the steps and taken them with you these last days of sorrow — the nights of vigil, the days of anxious care — the long iipminence, the final scenes — the laying away — the sealing from sight forever — all the last, last things and words. And then the awakened interest — the newly- found tongues of praise that before were silent— the meeds of merit too late uttered — but, but and but. John H. Johnston : How that funeral day will cling and grow ! In a hundred years not one like it, nor will there be in another hundred. What can we say of IngersoU ? It seems now as I think it over Sfirt£-s of Lilac ^3 that his speech was just such a one as Paul would have made over Jesus if he had lived out his days, and Paul had known him in the flesh. Percival Chubb : I must join in the chorus of tribute, regret and thankfulness. Harry L. Bonsall: Those who knew Walt Whitman loved him. Those who became imbued with the spirit of his poetry and philosophy revered him. Those who did not understand him ranked him with inscrutable mysteries, which, if not solvable, were none the less exempt from profanation. No man with heart or brains ever despised him. As a god from high Olympus he walked the earth in simple human guise, in physique and mentality, expression and action, looking, and being in essen- tial essence, the character attributed to him. With a circum- scribed but constantly growing number we have rated him as the first great democratic poet and philosopher. As we have set up for ourselves in politics, without servilely seeking medieval or even modern European methods, so in poetry, and, to some extent, in art, as in utilities, we will lead instead of following the old world. Walt Whitman has blazed the forests of our tangled pathway with sturdy strokes, and it will be less diflficult to follow than it was to lead the way. In one short lifetime, covering much, if not most, of the literary life of our country, his voice has been heard and heeded on both continents. Whitman's work was not for the masters but the masses. Like Lincoln, he believed in the apprehension and appreciation of the common people — the whole people of these states, and of the reading world, for that matter. The man who esteemed himself as a type of all men is better un- derstood by them than are those who follow the schools in writing for the schools and the fools who soar above their S4 Sprigs of Lilac kind, thinking that few are sufficiently well endowed to scale their heights. Whitman, the equal of any, peer of princes and presidents, shakes hands with Cuffee, his brother, as well. The pretenders in literature cannot approve of this leveller. But fortunately for poor, conventional literature, not all, nor nearly all, are pretenders ; and as the spirit of our poet infuses and transfuses itself into the circulation of newer blood, we believe the verdict will be that this day the Poet of the People, the Peer of the Proudest, lay dead in his humble Camden home. Daniel Longaker ; I feel that I have gained from Walt Whitman direct benefit far greater than material reward for any services I may have rendered him. I am confident you will understand what I mean. I am not thinking of any indirect benefit — only of the good my association with our departed friend has wrought in my own character. I have realized an enlargement of scope and breadth of view of life and affairs which I believe will go on with the advancing years — the impulse of it all originating in that association. Harry D. Bush : Walt is dead. But for me he still says : " Camerado, I will give you my hand, I will give you my love more precious than money." Other men may die. He will always live for me. The children of Camden may have lost their Kris, but we have lost less, for Walt's personality must live forever in his book. Richard Watson Gilder: I hope the wreath and flowers arrived to-day, and I was very much grieved not to be able to be there in person. He was in love witli trutli and knew her near— Her comrade, not her suppliant on the knee : She gave him wild melodious words to be Made music that should haunt the atmosphere. She drew him to her bosom, daylong dear, And pointed to the stars and to the sea, And taught him miracles and mystery. And made him master of the rounded year. Yet one gift did she keep. He looked in vain. Brow-shaded, through the darkness of the mist, Marking a beauty like a wandering breath That beckoned, yet denied his soul a tryst : He sang a passion, yet he saw not plain Till kind earth held him and he spake with death. Harrison S. Morris. ' At the last, tenderly, From the walls of the power/ul fortress' d house. From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the wdlrCloseA doen. Let me be wafted . ' Let me glide noiselessly forth; With the key of softness unlock the locks — wUh a whisper. Set ope the doors, soui. ' Tenderly— be not impatient, (Strong is your hold mortal flesh, Strong is your hold love)." PRECEDENT PAGES " Some solemn immoktal bibth," Walt Whitman, 3 " Good-eye, Walt," Edmund Clarence Stedman, 5 At the Graveside op Walt Whitman : at Harleigh Readings, FrancU Howard WlUiams, 7 Address, Thomas B. Hamed, 8 Readings, Francis Howard Williams, 10 Address, Daniel G. Brivton, 11. Readings, Francis Howard Williams, 13 Address, Richard Maurice Bucke, 14 Readings, Francis Howard Williams, 18 Address, Bobert G. IngersoU, 18 A Subsequent Note, John Burroughs, 22 Sprigs of Lilac : Clipt from Sundry Letters Alfred Tennyson, 25 Sidney Morse, 30 John Addington Symonds, 25 John Herbert Clifford, SI William Michael Sosseiii, 26 William Sloane Kennedy, 31 H. Buxton Forman, 26 Hamlin Garland, 32 Edward Carpenter, 26 Sylvester Baxter, 32 T. W. Eolleston, 27 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 32 Eudolf Schmidt, 27 I. Newton Baker, 32 J. W. Wallace, 27 John H. Johnston, 32 John Johnston, 28 Percival Chubb, 33 Ellen if. 0' Connor, 29 Harry L. Bonsall, 33 Elizabeth FairchUd, 29 Danid Longaker, 31 Herbert H. Gilchrist, 30 flarrj/ Z). BmsA, 34 Richard Watson Gilder, 34 " He was in love with truth," Harrison S. Morris, 35 '* At the last, tenderly," Walt Whitman, 37