The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: John Swinton to Walt Whitman, [25 September 1868]
Date: September 25, 1868
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01955
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Ashley Lawson, Elizabeth Lorang, and Beverley Rilett
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Friday 6. P.M.
My dear and great Walt.
As you did not come up yesterday afternoon I did not expect you to day.
I hope to be present when you come up for this package. I would be, did I know when you would come.
I want to see you that I may get another copy of the "Leaves" and subscribe an X for the expense of their publication
I am profoundly impressed with the great humanity, or genius, that expresses itself through you. I read this afternoon in the book. I read its first division which I never before read. I could convey no idea to you of how it affects my soul. It is more to me than all other books and poetry.
The poem in the Broadway has supreme passages and thoughts; but it does not seem to me perfectly artistic.
Art, as applied to poetry, simply means the best, highest, most national, most effective form of expression.
I salute you as the poet of my heart my intellect, my ideality, my life.
Yours [truly?]
J Swinton