Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy

Walt Whitman

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• Publié par: cejag
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English

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Title: Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy

Author: Walt Whitman

Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8813] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 22, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English

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COMPLETE PROSE WORKS

Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Good Bye My Fancy By

WALT WHITMAN

CONTENTS

SPECIMEN DAYS

 A Happy Hour's Command  Answer to an Insisting Friend  Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman  The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries  The Maternal Homestead  Two Old Family Interiors  Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man  My First Reading—Lafayette  Printing Office—Old Brooklyn  Growth—Health—Work  My Passion for Ferries  Broadway Sights  Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers  Plays and Operas too  Through Eight Years  Sources of Character—Results—1860  Opening of the Secession War  National Uprising and Volunteering  Contemptuous Feeling  Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861  The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins  Down at the Front  After First Fredericksburg  Back to Washington  Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field  Hospital Scenes and Persons  Patent-Office Hospital  The White House by Moonlight  An Army Hospital Ward  A Connecticut Case  Two Brooklyn Boys  A Secesh Brave  The Wounded from Chancellorsville  A Night Battle over a Week Since  Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier  Some Specimen Cases  My Preparations for Visits  Ambulance Processions  Bad Wounds—the Young  The Most Inspiriting of all War's Shows  Battle of Gettysburg  A Cavalry Camp  A New York Soldier  Home-Made Music  Abraham Lincoln  Heated Term  Soldiers and Talks  Death of a Wisconsin Officer  Hospitals Ensemble  A Silent Night Ramble  Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers  Cattle Droves about Washington  Hospital Perplexity  Down at the Front  Paying the Bounties  Rumors, Changes, Etc.  Virginia  Summer of 1864  A New Army Organization fit for America  Death of a Hero  Hospital Scenes—Incidents  A Yankee Soldier  Union Prisoners South  Deserters

 A Glimpse of War's Hell-Scenes  Gifts—Money—Discrimination  Items from My Note Books  A Case from Second Bull Run  Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies  The Blue Everywhere  A Model Hospital  Boys in the Army  Burial of a Lady Nurse  Female Nurses for Soldiers  Southern Escapees  The Capitol by Gas-Light  The Inauguration  Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War  The Weather—Does it Sympathize with These Times?  Inauguration Ball  Scene at the Capitol  A Yankee Antique  Wounds and Diseases  Death of President Lincoln  Sherman's Army Jubilation—its Sudden Stoppage  No Good Portrait of Lincoln  Releas'd Union Prisoners from South  Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier  The Armies Returning  The Grand Review  Western Soldiers  A Soldier on Lincoln  Two Brothers, one South, one North  Some Sad Cases Yet  Calhoun's Real Monument  Hospitals Closing  Typical Soldiers  "Convulsiveness"  Three Years Summ'd up  The Million Dead, too, Summ'd up  The Real War will never get in the Books  An Interregnum Paragraph  New Themes Enter'd Upon  Entering a Long Farm-Lane  To the Spring and Brook  An Early Summer Reveille  Birds Migrating at Midnight  Bumble-Bees  Cedar-Apples  Summer Sights and Indolences  Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—the Hermit Thrush  A July Afternoon by the Pond  Locusts and Katy-Dids  The Lesson of a Tree  Autumn Side-Bits  The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness  Colors—A Contrast  November 8, '76  Crows and Crows  A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach  Sea-Shore Fancies  In Memory of Thomas Paine  A Two Hours' Ice-Sail  Spring Overtures—Recreations  One of the Human Kinks  An Afternoon Scene  The Gates Opening  The Common Earth, the Soil  Birds and Birds and Birds  Full-Starr'd Nights  Mulleins and Mulleins  Distant Sounds  A Sun-Bath—Nakedness

 The Oaks and I  A Quintette  The First Frost—Mems  Three Young Men's Deaths  February Days  A Meadow Lark  Sundown Lights  Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream  Clover and Hay Perfume  An Unknown  Bird Whistling  Horse-Mint  Three of Us  Death of William Cullen Bryant  Jaunt up the Hudson  Happiness and Raspberries  A Specimen Tramp Family  Manhattan from the Bay  Human and Heroic New York  Hours for the Soul  Straw-Color'd and other Psyches  A Night Remembrance  Wild Flowers  A Civility Too Long Neglected  Delaware River—Days and Nights  Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter's Nights  The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street  Up the Hudson to Ulster County  Days at J.B.'s—Turf Fires—Spring Songs  Meeting a Hermit  An Ulster County Waterfall  Walter Dumont and his Medal  Hudson River Sights  Two City Areas Certain Hours  Central Park Walks and Talks  A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6  Departing of the Big Steamers  Two Hours on the Minnesota  Mature Summer Days and Night  Exposition Building—New City Hall—River-Trip  Swallows on the River  Begin a Long Jaunt West  In the Sleeper  Missouri State  Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas  The Prairies—(and an Undeliver'd Speech)  On to Denver—A Frontier Incident  An Hour on Kenosha Summit  An Egotistical "Find"  New Scenes—New Joys  Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc.  America's Back-Bone  The Parks  Art Features  Denver Impressions  I Turn South and then East Again  Unfulfill'd Wants—the Arkansas River  A Silent Little Follower—the Coreopsis  The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry  The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains  America's Characteristic Landscape  Earth's Most Important Stream  Prairie Analogies—the Tree Question  Mississippi Valley Literature  An Interviewer's Item  The Women of the West  The Silent General  President Hayes's Speeches  St. Louis Memoranda

 Nights on the Mississippi  Upon our Own Land  Edgar Poe's Significance  Beethoven's Septette  A Hint of Wild Nature  Loafing in the Woods  A Contralto Voice  Seeing Niagara to Advantage  Jaunting to Canada  Sunday with the Insane  Reminiscence of Elias Hicks  Grand Native Growth  A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada  The St. Lawrence Line  The Savage Saguenay  Capes Eternity and Trinity  Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay  The Inhabitants—Good Living  Cedar-Plums Like—Names  Death of Thomas Carlyle  Carlyle from American Points of View  A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit  A Week's Visit to Boston  The Boston of To-Day  My Tribute to Four Poets  Millet's Pictures—Last Items  Birds—and a Caution  Samples of my Common-Place Book  My Native Sand and Salt Once More  Hot Weather New York  "Ouster's Last Rally"  Some Old Acquaintances—Memories  A Discovery of Old Age  A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson  Other Concord Notations  Boston Common—More of Emerson  An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends  Only a New Ferry Boat  Death of Longfellow  Starting Newspapers  The Great Unrest of which We are Part  By Emerson's Grave  At Present Writing—Personal  After Trying a Certain Book  Final Confessions—Literary Tests  Nature and Democracy—Morality

COLLECT

ONEOR TWO INDEX ITEMS

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

ORIGINS OFATTEMPTED SECESSION

PREFACES TO "LEAVES OFGRASS"

 Preface, 1855, to first issue of "Leaves of Grass"  Preface, 1872, to "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free"  Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and "Two Rivulets"

POETRYTO-DAYIN AMERICA—SHAKESPEARE—THEFUTURE

A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE

DEATH OFABRAHAM LINCOLN

TWO LETTERS

NOTES LEFT OVER

 Nationality (and Yet)  Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them)  Ventures, on an Old Theme  British Literature  Darwinism (then Furthermore)  "Society"  The Tramp and Strike Questions  Democracy in the New World  Foundation Stages—then Others  General Suffrage, Elections, Etc.  Who Gets the Plunder?  Friendship (the Real Article)  Lacks and Wants Yet  Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses  Monuments—the Past and Present  Little or Nothing New After All  A Lincoln Reminiscence  Freedom  Book-Classes-America's Literature  Our Real Culmination  An American Problem  The Last Collective Compaction

PIECES IN EARLYYOUTH

 Dough Face Song  Death in the School-Room  One Wicked Impulse  The Last Loyalist  Wild Frank's Return  The Boy Lover  The Child and the Profligate  Lingave's Temptation  Little Jane  Dumb Kate  Talk to an Art Union  Blood-Money  Wounded in the House of Friends  Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight

NOVEMBER BOUGHS

OUR EMINENT VISITORS, Past, Present and Future

THEBIBLEAS POETRY

FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)

THESPANISH ELEMENT IN OUR NATIONALITY

WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS?

A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE

ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON

A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON

SLANGIN AMERICA

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE

SOMEDIARYNOTES AT RANDOM

 Negro Slaves in New York  Canada Nights  Country Days and Nights  Central Park Notes  Plate Glass Notes

SOMEWAR MEMORANDA

 Washington Street Scenes  The 195th Pennsylvania  Left-hand Writing by Soldiers  Central Virginia in '64  Paying the First Color'd Troops

FIVETHOUSAND POEMS

THEOLD BOWERY

NOTES TO LATEENGLISH BOOKS

 Preface to Reader in British Islands  Additional Note, 1887  Preface to English Edition "Democratic Vistas"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

NEW ORLEANS IN 1848

SMALL MEMORANDA

 Attorney General's Office, 1865  A Glint Inside of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet Appointments  Note to a Friend  Written Impromptu in an Album  The Place Gratitude fills in a Fine Character

LAST OFTHEWAR CASES

ELIAS HICKS, Notes (such as they are)

George Fox and Shakspere

GOOD-BYEMYFANCY

AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER

OLD POETS

 Ship Ahoy  For Queen Victoria's Birthday

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

GATHERINGTHECORN

A DEATH BOUQUET

SOMELAGGARDS YET

 The Perfect Human Voice  Shakspere for America  "Unassailed Renown"  Inscription for a Little Book on Giordano Bruno  Splinters  Health (Old Style)  Gay-heartedness  As in a Swoon  L. of G.  After the Argument  For Us Two, Reader Dear

MEMORANDA

 A World's Show  New York—the Bay—the Old Name  A Sick Spell

 To be Present Only  "Intestinal Agitation"  "Walt Whitman's Last 'Public'"  Ingersoll's Speech  Feeling Fairly  Old Brooklyn Days  Two Questions  Preface to a Volume  An Engineer's Obituary  Old Actors, Singers, Shows, Etc., in New York  Some Personal and Old Age Jottings  Out in the Open Again  America's Bulk Average  Last Saved Items

WALT WHITMAN'S LAST

SPECIMEN DAYS

A HAPPY HOUR'S COMMAND

Down in the Woods, July 2d, 1gg2.-If I do it at all I must delay no longer. Incongruous and full of skips and jumps as is that huddle of diary-jottings, war-memoranda of 1862-'65, Nature-notes of 1877-'81, with Western and Canadian observations afterwards, all bundled up and tied by a big string, the resolution and indeed mandate comes to me this day, this hour,—(and what a day! What an hour just passing! the luxury of riant grass and blowing breeze, with all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never before so filling me, body and soul),—to go home, untie the bundle, reel out diary-scraps and memoranda, just as they are, large or small, one after another, into print-pages,[1] and let the melange's lackings and wants of connection take care of themselves. It will illustrate one phase of humanity anyhow; how few of life's days and hours (and they not by relative value or proportion, but by chance) are ever noted. Probably another point, too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seems curiously imperative. May be, if I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.

Note: [1] The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of 1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note- books for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatim copies of those lurid and blood-smuch'd little notebooks.

Very different are most of the memoranda that follow. Some time after the war ended I had a paralytic stroke, which prostrated me for several years. In 1876 I began to get over the worst of it. From this date, portions of several seasons, especially summers, I spent at a secluded haunt down in Camden county, New Jersey—Timber creek, quite a little river (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve miles away)—with primitive solitudes, winding stream, recluse and woody banks, sweet-feeding springs, and all the charms that birds, grass, wild-flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, &c., can bring. Through these times, and on these spots, the diary from page 76 onward was mostly written.

The COLLECT afterwards gathers up the odds and ends of whatever pieces I can now lay hands on, written at various times past, and swoops all together like fish in a net.

I suppose I publish and leave the whole gathering, first, from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in a statement.

ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND

You ask for items, details of my early life—of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side—of the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before them—with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things—that one can only encompass and complete matters of that kind by 'exploring behind, perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet unfulfilled, probably abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate to make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor; but those will be the best versions of what I want to convey.

GENEALOGY—VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN

The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of Queen's county, about a mile from the harbor.[2] My father's side —probably the fifth generation from the first English arrivals in New England—were at the same time farmers on their