section here as I should have liked it to be; but I could not consent to
drop this typical name. The _Songs of Parting_, my fifth section, are
compositions in which the poet expresses his own sentiment regarding his
works, in which he forecasts their future, or consigns them to the reader's
consideration. It deserves mention that, in the copy of Whitman's last
American edition revised by his own hand, as previously noticed, the series
termed _Songs of Parting_ has been recast, and made to consist of poems of
the same character as those included in my section No. 5.

Comparatively few of Whitman's poems have been endowed by himself with
titles properly so called. Most of them are merely headed with the opening
words of the poems themselves--as "I was looking a long while;" "To get
betimes in Boston Town;" "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed;" and
so on. It seems to me that in a selection such a lengthy and circuitous
method of identifying the poems is not desirable: I should wish them to be
remembered by brief, repeatable, and significant titles. I have therefore
supplied titles of my own to such pieces as bear none in the original
edition: wherever a real title appears in that edition, I have retained it.

With these remarks I commend to the English reader the ensuing selection
from a writer whom I sincerely believe to be, whatever his faults, of the
order of _great_ poets, and by no means of pretty good ones. I would urge
the reader not to ask himself, and not to return any answer to the
questions, whether or not this poet is like other poets--whether or not the
particular application of rules of art which is found to hold good in the
works of those others, and to constitute a part of their excellence, can be
traced also in Whitman. Let the questions rather be--Is he powerful? Is he
American? Is he new? Is he rousing? Does he feel and make me feel? I
entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be
returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and