Mr: J. H. Lofting's Address on Walt Whitman: Romantic Career of the American Poet Mr. J. H. Lofting, in introducing his paper on Walt Whitman, ven before the Literary Department of the British Women's Association on Tresday afternoon, spoke of the function of poetry as conceived by Whitman and quoted from "The Song of the Answerer" to show the poet's estimate of it.
"The words of true poems give you more than poems, They give you to form for yourself poems, Yeligions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, daily life and everything else, They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds and the sexes, They do not seek beauty, they are sought, Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, pain, lovesick.
"They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, They bring none to his or.her terminus or to be content and full. Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, Io launch off with absolute faith, w sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again."
Very carefully, then, Mr, Lofting sought to explain the nature of the barrier which screens Whit-tean from the vast majority of even literary people to this day. "Tt is that desire to place' him, to ce-relate him to some already understood type," be said. He has no place in poetry, as the name is usually understood, and in the wider sense of the word that he has himself defined, he stands absolutely alone. Not Shake. speare touches his scope. Ther: are no limitations to Walt Whi man. In all the poems of 'Lea of Grass,' only one man is sung personally, in' such an one as Captain! My Captain! or more beautifully still, in 'When lilac last in the dooryard bloomed." This man is Abraham Lincoln. this instance only is Whitman's work susceptible of comparison with other poets and poems, such, for instance, as Milton's 'Lycidas' or Shelley's 'Adonais'." The poems of Walt Whitman were essentially the expression of life from_th.s individual point of view."
"It sets out to be and is," said Mr. Lofting in speaking of "Leaves of Grass," "the exposition of an average human mind seeking and finding truth in itself and its relation to and identity with the cosmos. It is wrong to lose sight of this fact, to accuse Walt Whitman, as he has been acoused, even by learned persons praising his work, of an egotism in the narrow sense, implying selfishness. In the best meaning of the word it is true of him. He was certainly self-reliant to an extraordinary degree. Self-willed he confesses to be. But he was the polar opposite of self-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.