Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass: The Death-Bed Edition

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY.

PREFACE NOTE TO 2D ANNEX, CONCLUDING L. OF G. - 1891.

Had I not better withhold (in this old age and paralysis of me) such little tags and fringe-dots (maybe specks, stains,) as follow a long dusty journey, and witness it afterward? I have probably not been enough afraid of careless touches, from the firstand am not nownor of parrot-like repetitionsnor platitudes and the commonplace. Perhaps I am too democratic for such avoidances. Besides, is not the verse-field, as originally plannd by my theory, now sufficiently illustratedand full time for me to silently retire?(indeed amid no loud call or market for my sort of poetic utterance.)

In answer, or rather defiance, to that kind of well-put interrogation, here comes this little cluster, and conclusion of my preceding clusters. Though not at all clear that, as here collated, it is worth printing (certainly I have nothing fresh to write)I while away the hours of my 72d yearhours of forced confinement in my denby putting in shape this small old age collation:

Last droplets of and after spontaneous rain,

From many limpid distillations and past showers;

(Will they germinate anything? mere exhalations as they all arethe lands and seasAmericas;

Will they filter to any deep emotion? any heart and brain?)

However that may be, I feel like improving to-days opportunity and wind up. During the last two years I have sent out, in the lulls of illness and exhaustion, certain chirpslingering-dying ones probably (undoubtedly)which now I may as well gather and put in fair type while able to see correctly(for my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming, and my brain more and more palpably neglects or refuses, month after month, even slight tasks or revisions.)

In fact, here I am these current years 1890 and 91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bangd conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywherenothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assignd, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bangd conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurrd old shell............(Reader, you must allow a little fun herefor one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, &c., and for another the passing hours (July 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine. And old as I am I feel to-day almost a part of some frolicsome wave, or for sporting yet like a kid or kittenprobably a streak of physical adjustment and perfection here and now. I believe I have it in me perennially anyhow.)

Then behind all, the deep-down consolation (it is a glum one, but I dare not be sorry for the fact of it in the past, nor refrain from dwelling, even vaunting here at the end) that this late-years palsied old shorn and shell-fish condition of me is the indubitable outcome and growth, now near for 20 years along, of too over-zealous, over-continued bodily and emotional excitement and action through the times of 1862, 3, 4 and 5, visiting and waiting on wounded and sick army volunteers, both sides, in campaigns or contests, or after them, or in hospitals or fields south of Washington City, or in that place and elsewherethose hot, sad, wrenching timesthe army volunteers, all States,or North or Souththe wounded, suffering, dyingthe exhausting, sweating summers, marches, battles, carnagethose trenches hurriedly heapd by the corpse-thousands, mainly unknownWill the America of the futurewill this vast rich Union ever realize what itself cost, back there after all?those hecatombs of battle-deathsThose times of which, O far-off reader, this whole book is indeed finally but a reminiscent memorial from thence by me to you?

SAIL OUT FOR GOOD, EIDLON YACHT!

Heave the anchor short!

Raise main-sail and jibsteer forth,

O little white-hulld sloop, now speed on really deep waters,

(I will not call it our concluding voyage,

But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)

Depart, depart from solid earthno more returning to these shores,

Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,

Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,

Sail out for good, eidlon yacht of me!

LINGERING LAST DROPS.

And whence and why come you?

We know not whence, (was the answer,)

We only know that we drift here with the rest,

That we lingerd and laggdbut were wafted at last, and are now here,

To make the passing showers concluding drops.

GOOD-BYE MY FANCY.

Good-bye* my fancy(I had a word to say,

But tis not quite the timeThe best of any mans word or say,

Is when its proper place arrivesand for its meaning,

I keep mine till the last.)

*Behind a Good-bye there lurks much of the salutation of another beginningto me, Development, Continuity, Immortality, Transformation, are the chiefest life-meanings of Nature and Humanity, and are the sine qua non of all facts, and each fact.

Why do folks dwell so fondly on the last words, advice, appearance, of the departing? Those last words are not samples of the best, which involve vitality at its full, and balance, and perfect control and scope. But they are valuable beyond measure to confirm and endorse the varied train, facts, theories and faith of the whole preceding life.

ON, ON THE SAME, YE JOCUND TWAIN!

On, on the same, ye jocund twain!

My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,

Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in onecombining all,

My single soulaims, confirmations, failures, joysNor single soul alone,

I chant my nations crucial stage, (Americas, haply humanitys)the trial great, the victory great,

A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world, the ancient, medieval,

Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeatshere at the west a voice triumphantjustifying all,