FEINBERG/WHITMAN   LITERARY FILE   Prose "Review of Richard M. Bucke's Critique & Leaves of Grass", [May 1884]                      A.M.S. draft

Box 33 Folder 53 



[*Note [3] [?]*]
I accept with joy (and one hope it is true)
what Dr Bucke [undoubtedly] gives
[meant at] for his [final] exclusive [reason is] summary of my pages, that
 the construction of [them] [L of G] [book] and every page of it is is bedded
[in entire] upon so thorough and reverent a faith in God's schemes
of Nature and Humanity and their results and final outcome
[so thorough] that the ordinary words
[that the word optimism]
[like] optimism and the like but [feebly] faintly describe it.

[It] The book indeed [???] ought to 
emanate buoyancy and gladness and faith, [on] for it
[wherever read,] [has] was grown out of love [for it has] 
[been to me a perp] those elements
[perpetual buoyancy, faith, hope,]
[spiritual content and]
[exercise, and the like.]
has been
the joy and [gladness]comfort of
my life, since it was [first] 
[started] [decidedly settled] on originally and
commenced.

I should like to
[live] journey that live
my years over 
again, since then, even with all
their worldly failures
and serious detriments
[and] deficiencies, and denials, to [go] get
[through] the happiness
of [forming it] 
re-traveling [the] that
[same] part of the road.Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
RAILROAD COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE,
20 Beacon Street,
BOSTON.

BOSTON MASS.
May 16 84
4 PM

Walt Whitman
328 Mickle St.
Camden
New Jersey

CAMDEN. N.J.
MAY 17
8 AM
1864
REC'D.

Mr. Walt Whitman