The kernel of every object that can be seen or felt or thought of has its relation to the soul, and is significant of something there.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes,
Where is he who tears off all husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes envelopes and stratagems of concealment for you and me?
Where is the develop’d soul, which has the quality to strike and to unclose?

The maker of poems, the answerer, he pierces the crusts that envelop the secrets of life,
What can be answer’d he answers—
The answer that waited thousands of years, easily understood after all—
And what cannot be answer’d he shows how it cannot be.
His brain is the ultimate brain, the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race;
Having attained those insights and contents which the universe gives to men capable of comprehending it,
He would publish the same, and persuade other men and women to the same.

I answer for him that answers for all, and send these signs,
I tell the signs of the answerer:
The poet is the equable man,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking,
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns.

The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
He builds, as it were, an impregnable and lofty tower overlooking all—
The citadel of the primary volitions, the soul, the ever-reserved right of a deathless individuality—
And these he occupies and dwells, and thence makes observations and issues verdicts.

He is no arguer, he is judgment,
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,
His words shed light to the best souls; they do not admit of argument,
His word is decisive and final, arrogant, fluent, severe.
Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.

He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men,
It shall be the glory of the greatest master to make perfect compositions in words,
Miracles from his hands, miracles from his mouth,
Recitative out of the miracles around you, the miracles of every day;
To make a perfect composition in words is more than to make the best building or machine, or the best statue or picture.

The perfect poet cannot afford any special beauty of parts,
He is the joiner—he sees how they join—
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals,
All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money will buy;
The joiner of the whole is the poet—he surrounds the whole.
A great work of a great poet is not remembered for its parts, but remembered as you remember the complete person and spirit of him or her you love. You cannot define too clearly what it is you love in a man or woman, or in a poem.

The master knows the earth’s words and uses them more than audible words,
Uses things—lilies, clouds, sunshine—poured copiously, things whirled like chain-shot rocks,
Things, facts, events, persons, days, ages, qualities, tumble pell-mell, exhaustless, and copious,
With what appear to be the same disregard of parts and the same absence of special purpose, as in nature.

Out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body,
He understands by subtle analogies all other theories,
The theory of a city, a poem, and of large politics.
He understands that last fruit of poetry, which controls, or shows, the large reserves of nature,
Which confronts the very meanings of the works of nature and competes with them.
The cool-breathed ground, the slumbering and liquid trees, the just-gone sunset, the vitreous pour of the full moon, the tender and growing night, he salutes and touches, and they touch him—
Nature accepts him absolutely.

Of this broad and majestic universe, all in the visible world, and much in the greater world invisible, is owned by the poet,
He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some purpose.
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality,
If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe.

The rare, cosmical artist-mind, lit with the infinite, alone confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities,
By his tremendous vital grasp of eternal principles, by the infinite reach of his illimitable intuitions, his insight and power encircle things and the human race,
He will bring poems fit to fill the days and nights,
Fit for men and women with the attributes of throbbing blood and flesh.

What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest, 
Looking with friendly eyes upon the earth and men,
Eye to pierce the deepest deep and sweep the world!  
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith.

The poets of the cosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. As the attributes of the poets of the cosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of genuineness over fiction and romance.

Bards! Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his face,
To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events,
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times.
He shows the true use of precedents,
Says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize you,
He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet.

But the direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today,
He puts today out of himself with plasticity and love,
The red life-blood of love, warming, running through every line, every word.
He rejects none, forces discrepancies into range, concentrates them on present periods and places,
If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it,
He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics,
So that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.

If he does not expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is wanted. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides, and if he be not himself the age transfigured, if to him is not opened eternity—let him merge in the general run and wait his development.

Yet the prescient poet also projects himself centuries ahead,
He forms the consistence of what is to be, from what has been and is,
Sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms,
Places himself where the future becomes the present—uniter of here and hereafter.

But in the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.

The great poet never stagnates,
He judges performer or performance after the changes of time—
Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired?
Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake?
Is he beloved long and long after he is buried?
Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him?
And do the middle-aged and the old still think of him?

Without effort and without exposing in the least how it is done, the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual character as you hear or read. It is the direct bringing of occurrences and persons and things to bear on the listener or beholder, to re-appear through him or her; and it offers the best way of making them a part of him and her.

Folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects,
Folks expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls,
He shows the application to each and anyone’s body and soul.

He knows the soul,
He answers at last the craving and glut of the soul,
Until the boundless and unspeakable capacities of that mystery, the human soul, should be filled to the uttermost,
And the problem of human cravingness be satisfied and destroyed.
What the sun and sky do to the senses,
What the landscape and waters, hills, free vistas to the eye,
He has done to the soul.

NEXT: THE GREAT POET’S CHARACTER 

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).