John Addington Symonds to Walt Whitman, 25 February 1872

see notes June 27 1888  loc.01962.001.jpg Clifton Hill House Bristol Feb 25 1872 Dear Mr. Whitman

I received the Washington newspaper with your new poem, for which I hasten to thank you. It is, I think, in your finest style. The conception is most impressive: for this transference to the unseen spiritual influences of the night, of what the poet feels of past splendor, & of Love and Struggle in the present life, & of Faith for the future, strikes somehow  loc.01962.002.jpg a soul-thrilling & elevating chord that tunes the whole poem to the pitch of a Heroic Symphony. Movements v & viii are especially grand. Who indeed but you are the Singer of Love & Faith in their new advent?

I have nothing worthy to send you in return. But yet I must exchange my token for yours—brazen for golden gifts, as the Greek poet said.  loc.01962.003.jpg Therefore I venture to enclose a study of Greek friendship. The misfortune of my poem is that it presupposes much knowledge of antiquity—as for instance that this Aristodemus returning alone from Thermopylae to Sparta was visited there with universal disgrace, that the Spartan youths lived not at home but in bands called "Herds," that the Spartans sacrificed to Love as the inspirer of Heroism before engaging in battle, & that, as a mere matter of recorded history, Callicrates was  loc.01962.004.jpg the most beautiful man among the Spartans & that he died in the ranks at the very opening of the battle of Platea. You to whom all things seem at first sight clear will need no further explanation.

I wrote to you some days since. More now I will not add—except that

I am ever yours J. A. Symonds.