(The death of President Lincoln, for instance, fitly,
historically closes, in the civilization of feudalism, many old
influences--drops on them, suddenly, a vast, gloomy, as it were,
separating curtain.)
Since I have been ill, (1873-'74-'75,) mostly without serious pain,
and with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge my poems,
(never composed with eye on the book-market, nor for fame, nor for any
pecuniary profit,) I have felt temporary depression more than once,
for fear that in "Leaves of Grass" the _moral_ parts were not
sufficiently pronounced. But in my clearest and calmest moods I have
realized that as those "Leaves," all and several, surely prepare the
way for, and necessitate morals, and are adjusted to them, just the
same as Nature does and is, they are what, consistently with my plan,
they must and probably should be. (In a certain sense, while the
Moral is the purport and last intelligence of all Nature, there is
absolutely nothing of the moral in the works, or laws, or shows of
Nature. Those only lead inevitably to it--begin and necessitate it.)
Then I meant "Leaves of Grass," as publish'd, to be the Poem of
average Identity, (of _yours_, whoever you are, now reading these
lines.) A man is not greatest as victor in war, nor inventor or
explorer, nor even in science, or in his intellectual or artistic
capacity, or exemplar in some vast benevolence. To the highest
democratic view, man is most acceptable in living well the practical
life and lot which happens to him as ordinary farmer, sea-farer,
mechanic, clerk, laborer, or driver--upon and from which position as a
central basis or pedestal, while performing its labors, and his duties
as citizen, son, husband, father and employ'd person, he preserves his
physique, ascends, developing, radiating himself in other regions--and
especially where and when, (greatest of all, and nobler than the
proudest mere genius or magnate in any field,) he fully realizes
the conscience, the spiritual, the divine faculty, cultivated well,
exemplified in all his deeds and words, through life, uncompromising
to the end--a flight loftier than any of Homer's or Shakspere's--broader
than all poems and bibles--namely, Nature's own, and in the midst of it,
Yourself, your own Identity, body and soul.
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