Anne Gilchrist to Walt Whitman, 9 March 1874
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March 9th. 1874
With full heart, with eyes wet with tears of joy & I know not what other deep
emotion—pain of yearning pity blent with the sense of grandeur, dearest Friend
have I read and reread the great sacred Poem just come to me.1 O august Columbus! whose sorrows sufferings struggles
are more to be 
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envied than any triumph of conquering warrior—as I see him in your poem his
figure merges into yours, brother of Columbus. Completer of his work, discoverer of
the spiritual, the ideal America—you too have sailed over stormy seas to your
goal—surrounded with mocking disbelievers—you too have paid the great
price of health—our 
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Your accents pierce me through & through—
Your loving Annie.
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Correspondent:
Anne Burrows Gilchrist
(1828–1885) was the author of one of the first significant pieces of
criticism on Leaves of Grass, titled "A Woman's Estimate
of Walt Whitman (From Late Letters by an English Lady to W. M. Rossetti)," The Radical 7 (May 1870), 345–59. Gilchrist's long
correspondence with Whitman indicates that she had fallen in love with the poet
after reading his work; when the pair met in 1876 when she moved to
Philadelphia, Whitman never fully returned her affection, although their
friendship deepened after that meeting. For more information on their
relationship, see Marion Walker Alcaro, "Gilchrist, Anne Burrows (1828–1885)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Having successfully submitted "Song of the Redwood-Tree" to Harper's New Monthly Magazine on November 2, 1873, Walt Whitman submitted a second poem, "Prayer of Columbus," later in November 1873, also for $60. Editor Henry Mills Alden (1836–1919) accepted the poem on December 1, 1873; it appeared in the March 1874 edition, 47:524–525. In reprinting the poem on February 24, 1874, the New York Tribune commented that it "shows the brawny vigor, but not the reckless audacity, by which the name of that wild poet has become best known to the public." For digital images of the poem as it appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, see "Prayer of Columbus." [back]