COPYRIGHT 1855, 1856, 1860, 1867 1871, 1876, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1888, 1891 BY WALT WHITMAN COPYRIGHT 1897 BY RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE THOMAS B. HARNED AND HORACE L. TRAUBEL LITERARY EXECUTORS OF WALT WHITMAN COPYRIGHT BY THOMAS B. HARNED AND HORACE L. TRAUBEL SURVIVING LITERARY EXECUTORS OF WALT WHITMAN ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL Preface Note to 2d Anner Concluding L. of G.—1891. HAD I not better withhold (in this old age and paralysis of me) such little tags and fringe-dots (maybe specks, stains,) as follow a long dusty journey, and witness it afterward? I have probably not been enough afraid of careless touches, from the first -and am not now-nor of parrot-like repetitions nor platitudes and the commonplace. Perhaps I am too democratic for such avoidances. Besides, is not the verse-field, as originally plann'd by my theory, now sufficiently illustrated-and full time for me to silently retire? — (indeed amid no loud call or market for my sort of poetic utterance). In answer, or rather defiance, to that kind of wellput interrogation, here comes this little cluster, and conclusion of my preceding clusters. Though not at all clear that, as here collated, it is worth printing (certainly I have nothing fresh to write) — I while away the hours of my 72d year hours of forced confinement in my den- by putting in shape this small old age collation: Last droplets of and after spontaneous rain, (Will they germinate anything? mere exhalations as they all are the land's and sea's America's; - Will they filter to any deep emotion ? any heart and brain ?) During the last two lulls of illness and However that may be, I feel like improving today's opportunity and wind up. years I have sent out, in the exhaustion, certain chirps-lingering-dying ones probably (undoubtedly) - which now I may as well gather and put in fair type while able to see correctly(for my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming, and my brain more and more palpably neglects or refuses, month after month, even slight tasks or revisions). In fact, here I am these current years 1890 and '91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang'd conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere-nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign'd, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bang'd conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurr'd old shell. (Reader, you must allow a little fun here for one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, &c., and for another the passing hours (July 5, 1890) |