How difficult it is to add anything more to literature--and how
unsatisfactory for any earnest spirit to serve merely the amusement of
the multitude! (It even seems to me, said H. Heine, more invigorating
to accomplish something bad than something empty.)
The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space,
Essentially my own printed records, all my volumes, are doubtless but
off-hand utterances f'm Personality spontaneous, following implicitly
the inscrutable command, dominated by that Personality, vaguely even
if decidedly, and with little or nothing of plan, art, erudition, &c.
If I have chosen to hold the reins, the mastery, it has mainly been to
give the way, the power, the road, to the invisible steeds. (I wanted
to see how a Person of America, the last half of the 19th century, w'd
appear, but quite freely and fairly in honest type.)
Haven't I given specimen clues, if no more? At any rate I have written
enough to weary myself--and I will dispatch it to the printers,
and cease. But how much--how many topics, of the greatest pointand
cogency, I am leaving untouch'd!
WALT WHITMAN'S LAST [49]
_Good-Bye my Fancy_.--concluding Annex to _Leaves of Grass_.
"The Highest said: Don't let us begin so low--isn't our range too
coarse--too gross?... The Soul answer'd: No, not when we consider what
it is all for--the end involved in Time and Space.
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