The Wisdom of Walt Whitman; Selected and Edited, with Introduction by Laurens Maynardl (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...must, in their way, be personal affection. And those--be they few, or be they many--are at any rate my readers, in a sense that belongs not, and never can belong, to better, prouder' poems. Preface, 1876. Invisible Communion WHEN you read these I that was visible am become invisible. Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade; Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.) Calamus. IV. RELIGION Passage indeed O soul to primal thought, Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, The young maturity of brood and bloom, To realms of budding bibles. Passage to India. WHEN I commenced, years ago, elaborating the plan of my poems... one deep purpose underlay the others, and has underlain it and its execution ever since--and that has been the religious purpose.... Not of course to exhibit itself in the old ways, as in writing hymns or psalms with an eye to the church pew, or to express conventional pietism, or the sickly yearnings of devotees, but in a new way, and aiming at the widest sub-bases and inclusions of humanity, and tallying the fresh air of sea and land. I will see, (said I to myself, ) whether there is not, for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound religious germenancy in the average human race... deeper and larger, and affording more profitable returns, than all mere sects or churches--as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature itself--a germenancy that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost unknown. With science, the old theology of the East, long in its dotage, begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind) science--and may-be such will prove its principal service--as evidently prepares the way for O...