Now that "enthusiastic cherishing from the few, gradually growing less few"2 has come to mean cherishing thousands growing to tens of thousands, most likely, your correspondents are overwhelmingly numerous.
This sense forbids my taking up the pen carelessly to intrude upon your attention.
I. Mr. H.H. Gilchrist3 has kindly given me particulars enabling me to apply to you, a great privilege, for some of your works—indeed I would like to possess most of them & these in their sacred unmutilated loc.02250.002.jpg entirety. 'Leaves of Grass,' Authors' Edition (1876)—'Two Rivulets' (1876),4 'Specimen Days & Collect,'5 are those mentioned to me by Mr. Gilchrist. Will you have the kindness to send me these works, informing me at the same time of their cost, the amount of which I will not delay in sending.
II. A request in another direction: I must begin by a détour. All men & women of generous soul who read you in your writings feel a brother's, the Poet's hand extended to them.
I came to grasp it; my humility to God, my esteem to you.
Tho' unknown to you I shall make no attempt to establish my fitness to ask your aid in loc.02250.003.jpg a matter belonging to my work as a composer. Intention must befriend me or my chance must fall.
I have already treated in choral & orchestral setting three great heads of human absorption—the theological, the humanitarian & the erotic—the first, upon Keble's6 "Christmas Day" (Christian Year)—the second, upon George Eliot's7 "O May I Join the Choir Invisible"; the third, upon W. Morris'8 lyrical piece in "The Hill of Venus." In the first, I send you a copy of this work, I have perforce of my religious perception, vested the subject, 'The Nativity' with human belongings, human throbs:—the Christ as founder, as a man, is solemn fact—the super natural story of him, to me, is but a grand Myth, the grandest perhaps of all time.
loc.02250.004.jpgOf my "Song of Humanity" I endeavour to convey the spirituality in these words— "A celebration of man's high destiny— truth above the Faiths, the Religion of moral goodness, Fraternal sonship, responsive and responsible—Hope illimitable, beautiful, strong, unvanquishable "Through sorrow & the inscrutable—the experience of Omnipotent order & love."
To the third production "Hymn to Venus" to which I allude I have written as 'Argument'—"That which annihilates man's capacity as a moral being, is the presumption of his need of a regeneration that loc.02250.005.jpg he may be acceptable to man or God.
Were he, at his coming, hailed as a creative 'form, virtuous but capable of sin'9—had he the responsibility, placed upon him of an innate pure & noble moral nature, the relations of man to man would be radically, & absolutely altered.
Between woman & man there would be gentle ministering to holy yearnings where now is sullen unrest, physical & mental misery; and worse loc.02250.006.jpg corruption the direst man can suffer—his fallen sister.'
Man would find edification in what now is his shame—the human God—imaged form, which lasts not beyond this fair earth.
The sculptor's highest inspiration could be no man's lust: alas! the word ever conveyed a meaning.
In this lyric the poet sings of life as it was without Venus, & without the bond of fraternity. Indeed, he tells of life as it is with us today "'mid weary thoughts of man & God"10 go we our daily round; loc.02250.007.jpg with faiths for our salvation which have their base & rising of other elements than those of the eternal laws of human love (which is the divine), & that Christly religion, moral goodness, which alone gives proof to see feel & know an Almighty God—a Father of all benevolence, tho' peace & joy, throes & heaviness hold the present of the high heart.
Such, be it affirmed, was the composers' conception of the lot of man while contemplating the subject before him."
I would next treat as a subject some loc.02250.008.jpg view of life & incident of America's heroic Democracy—the 4 years war, or the war of Independence.
And now I return to my request—merely, that you may indicate to me where & how I might find a text for such a work as I have in mind—an Opera or a Dramatic Oratorio. For both purposes alike the literary expression should pass briefly on in lucid meaning, never involved.
The verse interwoven in blank & lyric structure.
I should more than value your meagrest suggestion & indeed, would not willingly put you to the trouble of more than this.
Yours in sincerity Henry Holmes To Walt Whitman loc.02250.009.jpg loc.02250.010.jpgCorrespondent:
Henry Holmes (1839–1905) was
a well-known English violinist; he also composed violin concertos, cantatas, and
symphonies, and he taught at the Royal College of Music.