Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

284 STANDISH O'gRADY
degeneracy and threatened degradation of the Athenian
character thereby, which Plato vainly sought to stem both
by his own exhortations, and by holding up the powerful
example of Socrates.
There cannot be a doubt but that with highly developed
races friendship is a passion, and like all passions more
physical than intellectual in its sources and modes of
expression.
I will sing the song of companionship, I will show what
finally must compact these (the States)
I beUeve these are to found their own ideal of manly love
indicating it in me.
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were
threatening to consume me.
I will lift what has too long kept down these smouldering
fires.
I will give them complete abandonment. I will write the
evangdj)oem of comrades and love. For who but I
should understand love with all its sorrow and joy ?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades ?
This is strong language and doubtless genuine. Pride
and love, I have said, Whitman considers the two hemi-
spheres of the brain of humanity, and by love he means
not alone benevolence and wide sympathy and the passion
that embraces sexual relation, but that other passion,
which has existed before and whose latent strength the
American poet here indicates as a burning and repressed
flame. Elsewhere he speaks of the sick, sick dread of
unreturned friendship, of the comrade's kiss, the arm
around the neck—but he speaks to sticks and stones, and
the emotion does not exist in us, and the language of his
evangel-poems appear simply disgusting.
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