Collected Letters of Walt Whitman & Anne Gilchrist. Gilchrist Anne Burrows

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       “The body parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.”

      Science knows that whenever a thing passes from a solid to a subtle air, power is set free to a wider scope of action. The poet knows it too, and is dazzled as he turns his eyes toward “the superb vistas of death.” He knows that “the perpetual transfers and promotions” and “the amplitude of time” are for a man as well as for the earth. The man of science, with unwearied, self-denying toil, finds the letters and joins them into words. But the poet alone can make complete sentences. The man of science furnishes the premises; but it is the poet who draws the final conclusion. Both together are “swiftly and surely preparing a future greater than all the past.” But, while the man of science bequeaths to it the fruits of his toil, the poet, this mighty poet, bequeaths himself—“Death making him really undying.” He will “stand as nigh as the nighest” to these men and women. For he taught them, in words which breathe out his very heart and soul into theirs, that “love of comrades” which, like the “soft-born measureless light,” makes wholesome and fertile every spot it penetrates to, lighting up dark social and political problems, and kindling into a genial glow that great heart of justice which is the life-source of Democracy. He, the beloved friend of all, initiated for them a “new and superb friendship”; whispered that secret of a godlike pride in a man’s self, and a perfect trust in woman, whereby their love for each other, no longer poisoned and stifled, but basking in the light of God’s smile, and sending up to him a perfume of gratitude, attains at last a divine and tender completeness. He gave a faith-compelling utterance to that “wisdom which is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and of the excellence of things.” Happy America, that he should be her son! One sees, indeed, that only a young giant of a nation could produce this kind of greatness, so full of the ardour, the elasticity, the inexhaustible vigour and freshness, the joyousness, the audacity of youth. But I, for one, cannot grudge anything to America. For, after all, the young giant is the old English giant—the great English race renewing its youth in that magnificent land, “Mexican-breathed, Arctic-braced,” and girding up its loins to start on a new career that shall match with the greatness of the new home.