By this morning mail arrived your two post cards of 21st and 22d1 and also "Truth"2 for 19th inst. for which latter many thanks I was going to write for it and am glad to have it without waiting. I like "Old Chants"3 well—exceedingly, indeed.—Walt, I cannot see this falling off that they speak of in your poetry—some of your late prose has not been to my mind up to your standard—but your verse has not fallen off—of course you do not write now as you did in the "Song of Myself"4 days—in power there has been since then a tremendous drop—but that drop occurred in the early '60—Since then you have held your own and today your verse has as great, as wonderful subtlety and charm as loc_zs.00329.jpg ever it had.
Stoddart's column5 is interesting and in good taste.—
I am real glad that you have had the doctor6 and more glad still that you seem to take kindly to him—I hope now that you will let him keep coming and I am certain he will help you—that he thinks things fairly satisfactory with you is good and comforting.
All quiet with us here—nothing settled yet as to when Mrs B.7 & self shall go east.
The meter,8 as usual, moves along slowly but prospects remain good I still think we should make a big thing of it but it may take a while yet
So long! With best love R M BuckeCorrespondent:
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) was a
Canadian physician and psychiatrist who grew close to Whitman after reading Leaves of Grass in 1867 (and later memorizing it) and
meeting the poet in Camden a decade later. Even before meeting Whitman, Bucke
claimed in 1872 that a reading of Leaves of Grass led him
to experience "cosmic consciousness" and an overwhelming sense of epiphany.
Bucke became the poet's first biographer with Walt
Whitman (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1883), and he later served as one
of his medical advisors and literary executors. For more on the relationship of
Bucke and Whitman, see Howard Nelson, "Bucke, Richard Maurice," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).