He wrote some fascinating prose in
this final period, and his cluttered chamber in Camden became the
shrine of many a literary pilgrim, among them some of the
foremost men of letters of this country and of Europe. He was
cared for by loyal friends. Occasionally he appeared in public, a
magnificent gray figure of a man. And then, at seventy-three, the
"Dark mother always gliding near" enfolded him.
There are puzzling things in the physical and moral constitution
of Walt Whitman, and the obstinate questions involved in his
theory of poetry and in his actual poetical performance are still
far from solution. But a few points concerning him are by this
time fairly clear. They must be swiftly summarized.
The first obstacle to the popular acceptance of Walt Whitman is
the formlessness or alleged formlessness of "Leaves of Grass."
This is a highly technical question, involving a more accurate
notation than has thus far been made of the patterns and tunes of
free verse and of emotional prose. Whitman's "new and national
declamatory expression," as he termed it, cannot receive a final
technical valuation until we have made more scientific progress
in the analysis of rhythms.
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