Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman

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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

ONE OR TWO INDEX ITEMS

DEMOCRATIC VISTAS

ORIGINS OF ATTEMPTED SECESSION

PREFACES TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"

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"

POETRY TO-DAY IN AMERICA--SHAKESPEARE--THE FUTURE

A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE

DEATH OF ABRAHAM 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 EARLY YOUTH

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

THE BIBLE AS POETRY

FATHER TAYLOR (AND ORATORY)

THE SPANISH 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

SLANG IN AMERICA

AN INDIAN BUREAU REMINISCENCE

SOME DIARY NOTES AT RANDOM

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

SOME WAR MEMORANDA

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

FIVE THOUSAND POEMS

THE OLD BOWERY

NOTES TO LATE ENGLISH 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 OF THE WAR CASES

ELIAS HICKS, Notes (such as they are)

George Fox and Shakspere

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

AN OLD MAN'S REJOINDER

OLD POETS

Ship Ahoy
For Queen Victoria's Birthday

AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE

GATHERING THE CORN

A DEATH BOUQUET

SOME LAGGARDS 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, 1882_.-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 own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all
good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods,
plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at West Hills,
Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branch
and South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old
England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in
1629. He came over in the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived
in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of the
New-Englanders of the name; he died in 1692. His brother, Rev.
Zechariah Whitman, also came over in the "True Love," either at
that time or soon after, and lived at Milford, Conn. A son of this
Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long Island, and
permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol.
iv, p. 524) gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington,
per this Joseph, before 1664. It is quite certain that from that
beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all others in
Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John and
Zechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they had
large families, and several of their children were born in the old
country. We hear of the father of John and Zechariah, Abijah Whitman,
who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him, except
that he also was for some time in America.

These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I
made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial
grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that
visit, written there and then:

Note:

[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch from
Holland, then on the east end by the English--the dividing line of the
two nationalities being a little west of Huntington where my father's
folks lived, and where I was born.

THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES

_July 29, 1881_.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a
brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he
died,) went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place where
I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old
familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them,
every-thing coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on
the upland and took a view eastward, inclining south, over the broad
and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father.
There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two
hundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and
a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my
great-grandfather (1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbers
and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous
black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no
doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side of
the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees
planted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse's,) but
quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual
blossoms and fruit yet.

I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a
century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many
generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and
as many more decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled and
broken stones, cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the
clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing
wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any
of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what
must this one have been to me? My whole family history, with its
succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told
here--three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre.

The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if
possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this
paragraph on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring,
the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd,
without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil
sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a
hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around,
very primi-tive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive
here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or
three-score graves quite plain; as many more almost rubb'd out. My
grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerous
relatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here. The
scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a
slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and
the inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments.

THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD

I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the
site of the Van Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,)
and where every spot had been familiar to me as a child and youth
(1825-'40.) Then stood there a long rambling, dark-gray, shingle-sided
house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space. Now
of all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased,
and the plough and harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and
everything, for many summers; fenced in at present, and grain and
clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole from the
cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and
weeds, identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring
seem'd to have mostly dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it
arous'd, memories of my young days there half a century ago, the vast
kitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining, the plain
furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother
Amy's sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the
Major," jovial, red, stout, with sonorous voice and characteristic
physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made the most
pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt.

For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my
dearest mother, Louisa Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams,
of the Friends' or Quakers' denomination--the Williams family, seven
sisters and one brother--the father and brother sailors, both of whom
met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine
horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother,
as a young woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the
family himself, the old race of the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on
Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties, never yielded a
more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van
Velsor.

TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS

Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and
just before that time, here are two samples:

"The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in a
long story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely timber'd, which is still
standing. A great smoke-canopied kitchen, with vast hearth and
chimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery in New
York at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelve
or fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite a
patriarchial look. The very young darkies could be seen, a swarm of
them, toward sundown, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on the
floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house,
and in food and furniture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpets
or stoves were known, and no coffee, and tea or sugar only for the
women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on winter nights.
Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were
plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. The
clothes were mainly homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women
on horseback. Both sexes labor'd with their own hands-the men on the
farm--the women in the house and around it. Books were scarce. The
annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over through the
long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these
families were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high
places, and to hear in still hours the roar of the surf; the latter,
after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all hands, male
and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the
men on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming
and fishing."--_John Burroughs's_ NOTES.