Walt Whitman flaunts his
ability to fraternize with the man of the street. But the American
public has failed "to absorb him as affectionately as he has absorbed
it." [Footnote: _By Blue Ontario's Shore._] Emerson tries to get on
common ground with his audience by asserting that every man is a poet to
some extent,[Footnote: See _The Enchanter_.] and it is consistent
with the poetic theory of Yeats that he makes the same assertion as
Emerson:
There cannot be confusion of sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.
[Footnote: _Pandeen._]
But when the mob jeers at a poet, it does not take kindly to his retort,
"Poet yourself." Longfellow, J. G. Holland and James Whitcombe Riley
have been warmly commended by some of their brothers [Footnote: See O.
W. Holmes, _To Longfellow_; P. H. Hayne, _To Henry W. Longfellow_; T. B.
Read, _A Leaf from the Past_; E. C. Stedman, _J. G. H._; P. L. Dunbar,
_James Whitcombe Riley_; J. W. Riley, _Rhymes of Ironquill_.] for their
promiscuous friendliness, but on the whole there is a tendency on the
part of the public to sniff at these poets, as well as at those who
commend them, because they make themselves so common.
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