The starting-point
and center of the Whitman world is the individual man, the
"strong person," imperturbable in mind, athletic in body,
unconquerable, and immortal. Such individuals meet in
comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world.
No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is
room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and
sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human
society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes
directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open
road, to his conception of "these States." One of his typical
visions of the breadth and depth and height of America will be
found in "By Blue Ontario's Shore." In this and in many similar
rhapsodies Whitman holds obstinately to what may be termed the
three points of his national creed. The first is the newness of
America, and its expression is in his well-known chant of
"Pioneers, O Pioneers." Yet this new America is subtly related to
the past; and in Whitman's later poems, such as "Passage to
India," the spiritual kinship of orient and occident is
emphasized.
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