Glad am I when the time comes round for writing to you again—though I can't please myself
with my letters, poor little echoes that they are of the loving, hoping, far journeying thoughts
so busy within. It has been a happy time since I
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received the paper with the joyful news you were back at Washington, well on
your way to recovery able partially to resume work1—scenting from
afar the fresh breeze & sunshine of perfect health—by this time, not from afar perhaps.
The thought of that makes dull days bright & bright days glorious to me too.—I noted in
the New York Graphic2 that a new edition of Leaves of Grass was called for
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—sign truly that America is not so very slowly & now absorbing the precious food she
needs above all else? Perhaps dear Friend even during your lifetime will begin to come the "proof
you will alone accept,—that "your country absorb you as affectionately as you have absorbed
it." I have had two great pleasures since I last wrote you. One is that Herby3
has read with a large measure of
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responsive delight Leaves of Grass quite through, so that he now sees you with his own eyes
& has in his heart the living growing germs of a loving admiration that will grow with his
growth & strengthen every fibre of good in him—Also he read & took much pride in
my "Letters" now shown him for the first time. Percy4 has had a
fortnight's holiday with us, and looks better
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in health though still not altogether as I could wish. He says he is getting such good experience, he
would not care just yet to change his post even for better pay. Music is his greatest pleasure—he
seems to get more enjoyment out of that than out of literature, & is acquiring some practical skill.
Today (Feb. 25th) is my birthday dearest Friend—a day my children always
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make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to "do nothing but what I like
all day." So I shall spend it with you,—partly in finishing this letter, partly reading in
the book that is so dear to me—for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your
soul—filled by it with strength & warmth & joy.—In discouraged moods when
oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations,
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failures, lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself "What sort of a bird with unfledged
wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look the sun in the face like his?
Can you sustain year long, lifelong flights upward? Can you nest in dizzy rocks overhanging
dark, tempestuous abysses? Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?" Then I answer
"Give me
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Time. I can bide my time,—a long long growing & unfolding time. That he draws me with
such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself in him—the object of all its deep,
deathless aspirations in comradeship with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by
death, that the germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up &
on I shall grow like him—like but different—the correlative—What his soul needs
& desires;
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"And if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards me,—if seeing how often I disappoint
myself, needs must that he too is disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this
inextinguishable faith & hope—with the added joy of his presence sometimes winning from
him more & more a dear friendship yielding him some joy
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& comfort—for he too turns with hope, with yearning towards me—bids me be
"satisfied & at peace" So I am, so I will be my Darling. Surely surely, sooner or later
I shall justify that hope satisfy that yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you
this 46th birthday Have I said it over & over again? That
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is because it is the under current of my whole life.—The "Tribune" with Proctors Lecture on
the Sun5 (& a great deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly
lecture. And two days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's6 speech—deeply interesting.
And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come from, & been read by you turns them
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into Poems for me.
W. Rossetti's7 marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat with Mr. Conway,8 who took supper with us a week or two ago.
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).