PORT OF DEMOCRACY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18180, 28 August 1922, Page 9

PORT OF DEMOCRACY.

■ .:■ JUi Hi ' —— LECTURE ON WALT WHITMAN. The jfourth of the series of Sunday afternoon literary leatures asrxa&g&d by the Workers' Educational Association, was delivered in the Tiveli Theatre yesterday, when Dr. J. W. Mellraith took as his subject, "Walt Whitman the Poet of Democracy." Mr. 0. A. -Watte presided. -™ . The speaker said that Walt Whitman was not understood by the majority of people, chiefly on account of the nature of his poetry which, like the man himself, was unconventional. By the critics of his day and even of the present day he was condemned for his lack of reverence for institutions—his belief being that Governments and all institutions, existed for man and not man for them. His verse, though not regular and formal, contained much beautiful language, and the lecturer quoted extensively from the poet's work, revealing in a marked degree his idealism and scorn of convention. One thinu that Whitman had said about lainself the speaker quoted as summing him up- "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roof of the world," although he perhaps was not so barbaric as he would have others believe.