Not only does he, before Nietzsche, possess this sense of the virtue of the earth, but he has, as well, the expectation of a superior race of men. To the men of his day he says:
For man of you, your characteristic race,
Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate to Nature,
Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck’d by wall or roof,
Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure,
Here heed himself.[1]
And to the mystic trumpeter he cries:
Marches of victory—man disenthral’d—the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy!
A reborn race appears—a perfect world, all joy![2]
These moments of Dionysiac frenzy, in which Whitman is seized by the rapture of joy, are not rare in his songs. “I am one who ever laughs,” he says. Not only does he laugh; he goes mad with joy. One of his ecstasies ends thus:
O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
