{"product_id":"2940012930071","title":"A DAY WITH WALT WHITMAN","description":"\u003cbr\u003e• Illustrated book \u003cbr\u003e• Images has been resized  and optimized for the Nook\u003cbr\u003e• The book has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors\u003cbr\u003e• New and improved version\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbout six o'clock on a midsummer morning in 1877, a tall old man awoke, and was out of bed next moment,—but he moved with a certain slow leisureliness, as one who will not be hurried. The reason of this deliberate movement was obvious,—he had to drag a paralysed leg, which was only gradually recovering its ability and would always be slightly lame. Seen more closely, he was not by any means so old as at first sight one might imagine. His snow-white hair and almost-white grey beard indicated some eighty years: but he was vigorous, erect and rosy: his clear grey-blue eyes were bright with a \"wild-hawk look,\"—his face was firm and without a line. An air of splendid vital force, despite his infirmity, was diffused from his whole person, and defied the fact of his actual age, which was two years short of sixty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDressing with the same large, leisurely gestures as characterized him in everything, Walt Whitman was presently attired in his invariable suit of grey: and by the time the clock touched half-past seven, he was seated in the verandah, comfortably inhaling the sweet, fresh morning air, and quite ready for his simple breakfast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this old farmhouse, in the New Jersey hamlet of White Horse, Walt Whitman had been long an inmate. He was recovering by almost imperceptible degrees from the breakdown induced by over-strain, mental and physical, which had culminated in intermittent paralytic seizures for the last eight years, and had left his robust physique a mere wreck of its former magnificence. Here, in the absolute peace and seclusion of the little wooden house, with its few fields and fruit-trees, he lived in lovable companionship with the farmer-folk, man, wife and sons: and here, the level, faintly undulated country, \"neither attractive nor unattractive,\" supplied all the needs of his strenuous nature and healed him with its calm, curative influences. He steeped himself, month by month, season after season, in \"primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut-trees, etc., can bring.\" Simple fare, these charms might seem to a townsman: to the \"good grey poet\" they were not only sufficient but inexhaustible. Dearly as he loved the \"swarming and tumultuous\" life of cities, the tops of Broadway omnibuses, the Brooklyn ferry-boats, the eternal panorama of the multitude, his true delight was in the vast expanses, the illimitable spaces, the very earth from which, Antæus-like, he drew his vital strength. Out here, in the country solitudes, alone could he observe how—in a way undreamed of by the street-dweller,—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEver upon this stageIs acted God's calm annual drama,Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,The lilliput countless armies of the grass.\u003cbr\u003e(The Return of the Heroes.)\u003cbr\u003eIt may be doubted whether any other poet who has been inspired by outdoor Nature, has approximated so closely as Whitman to the \"shows of all variety,\" which nature presents,—from the infinite gradations of microscopic detail, to the enormous range and sweep of dim vastitudes. His poetry has a huge elemental quality, akin to that of winds and clouds and seas. \"To speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside,\"—this was the standard he had set himself: and, in pursuance of this ideal, he had given his first and most typically unconventional volume the title \"Leaves of Grass.\" No name could better convey and sum up his meaning in art,—a commixture of the minute and the universal, the simple and the inexplicable, the particular and the all-pervading,—the commonplace which is also the miracle: for to Whitman leaves of grass were this and more. \"To me,\" he declared, \"as I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass,\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery hour of the light and dark is a miracle—Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,\u003cbr\u003ethe grass-blades no less so than the \"gentle soft-born measureless light.\" And, avowedly, from these external expressions of nature he derived all power of song—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven—O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions...","brand":"Unforgotten Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47162784055536,"sku":"2940012930071","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012930071_p0.jpg?v=1763585665","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012930071","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}