THE
Good Gray Poet.
A VINDICATION.
NEW YORK:
BUNCE & HUNTINGTON, 459, BROOME STREET.
1866.
THE GOOD GRAY POET.
A VINDICATION.
Washington, D. C., September 2, 1865.
Nine weeks have elapsed since the commission of an outrage,to which I have not till now been able to give myattention, but which, in the interest of the sacred cause of freeletters, and in that alone, I never meant should pass withoutits proper and enduring brand.
For years past, thousands of people in New York, inBrooklyn, in Boston, in New Orleans, and latterly in Washington,have seen, even as I saw two hours ago, tallying, onemight say, the streets of our American cities, and fit to havefor his background and accessories, their streaming populationsand ample and rich façades, a man of striking masculinebeauty—a poet—powerful and venerable in appearance;large, calm, superbly formed; oftenest clad in the careless,rough, and always picturesque costume of the common people;resembling, and generally taken by strangers for, some greatmechanic, or stevedore, or seaman, or grand laborer of onekind or another; and passing slowly in this guise, with nonchalantand haughty step along the pavement, with the sunlightand shadows falling around him. The dark sombrerohe usually wears was, when I saw him just now, the daybeing warm, held for the moment in his hand; rich light anartist would have chosen, lay upon his uncovered head, majestic,large, Homeric, and set upon his strong shoulders with thegrandeur of ancient sculpture; I marked the countenance,serene, proud, cheerful, florid, grave; the brow seamed withnoble wrinkles; the features, massive and handsome, with firmblue eyes; the eyebrows and eyelids especially showing thatfullness of arch seldom seen save in the antique busts; theflowing hair and fleecy beard, both very gray, and temperingwith a look of age the youthful aspect of one who is but forty-five;the simplicity and purity of his dress, cheap and plain, butspotless, from snowy falling collar to burnished boot, and exhalingfaint fragrance; the whole form surrounded with manliness,as with a nimbus, and breathing, in its perfect health andvigor, the august charm of the strong. We who have lookedupon this figure, or listened to that clear, cheerful, vibratingvoice, might thrill to think, could we but transcend our age,that we had been thus near to one of the greatest of the sonsof men. But Dante stirs no deep pulse, unless it be of hate, ashe walks the streets of Florence; that shabby, one-armedsoldier, just out of jail and hardly noticed, though he hasamused Europe, is Michael Cervantes; that son of a vine-dresser,whom Athens laughs at as an eccentric genius, before it isthought worth while to roar him into exile, is the century-shakingÆschylus; tha