The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Unidentified Correspondent to Walt Whitman, 19 May 1889
Date: May 19, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.04935
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: Zainab Saleh, Stephanie Blalock, and Brandon James O'Neil
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Australia
May 19th 1889
More than a year ago we first read your poems & since then they have done so much for us that we now write wishing to express our reverence & gratitude. We are Australian & feel that in Australia a people are growing up who will help to give shape to the thought of Democracy—a people in sympathy with the aim & tendency of America—& so we want to thank you for having shown us what modern life can & ought to be—for we recognise your poems as prophecies of the grander future & the greater religion that is to be. In a new land like Australia—where the young life is free & rigorous—we believe that your message will be sooner accepted than among the old-world nations & that a day will come when you will receive not our thanks only but our whole country's.
Correspondent:
Nothing is known about the correspondent or
correspondents other than that they are an Australian admirer or admirers of
Whitman's poems.