Endnotes
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Navesink—a seaside mountain, lower entrance of New York Bay. ↩
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The two songs on this page (“Now Precedent Songs, Farewell” and “An Evening Lull”) are eked out during an afternoon, June, 1888, in my seventieth year, at a critical spell of illness. Of course no reader and probably no human being at any time will ever have such phases of emotional and solemn action as these involve to me. I feel in them an end and close of all. ↩
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Behind a Goodbye there lurks much of the salutation of another beginning—to 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. ↩
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Note.—Summer country life.—Several years.—In my rambles and explorations I found a woody place near the creek, where for some reason the birds in happy mood seem’d to resort in unusual numbers. Especially at the beginning of the day, and again at the ending, I was sure to get there the most copious bird-concerts. I repair’d there frequently at sunrise—and also at sunset, or just before. … Once the question arose in me: Which is the best singing, the first or the lattermost? The first always exhilarated, and perhaps seem’d more joyous and stronger; but I always felt the sunset or late afternoon sounds more penetrating and sweeter—seem’d to touch the soul—often the evening thrushes, two or three of them, responding and perhaps blending. Though I miss’d some of the mornings, I found myself getting to be quite strictly punctual at the evening utterances.
Another Note.—“He went out with the tide and the sunset,” was a phrase I heard from a surgeon describing an old sailor’s death under peculiarly gentle conditions.
During the Secession War, 1863 and ’4, visitng the Army Hospitals around Washington, I form’d the habit, and continued it to the end, whenever the ebb or flood tide began the latter part of the day, of punctually visiting those at that time populous wards of suffering men. Somehow (or I thought so) the effect of the hour was palpable. The badly wounded would get some ease, and would like to talk a little, or be talk’d to. Intellectual and emotional natures would be at their best: Deaths were always easier; medicines seem’d to have better effect when given then, and a lulling atmosphere would pervade the wards.
Similar influences, similar circumstances and hours, day-close, after great battles, even with all their horrors. I had more than once the same experience on the fields cover’d with fallen or dead. ↩
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Note.—Camden, N.J., August 7, 1888.—Walt Whitman asks the New York Herald “to add his tribute to Sheridan:”
“In the grand constellation of five or six names, under Lincoln’s Presidency, that history will bear for ages in her firmament as marking the last life-throbs of secession, and beaming on its dying gasps, Sheridan’s will be bright. One consideration rising out of the now dead soldier’s example as it passes my mind, is worth taking notice of. If the war had continued any long time these States, in my opinion, would have shown and proved the most conclusive military talents ever evinced by any nation on earth. That they possess’d a rank and file ahead of all other known in points of quality and limitlessness of number are easily admitted. But we have, too, the eligibility of organizing, handling and officering equal to the other. These two, with modern arms, transportation, and inventive American genius, would make the United States, with earnestness, not only able to stand the whole world, but conquer that world united against us.” ↩
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When Champollion, on his deathbed, handed to the printer the revised proof of his Egyptian Grammar, he said gayly, “Be careful of this—it is my carte de visite to posterity.” ↩
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The ferment and germination even of the United States today, dating back to, and in my opinion mainly founded on, the Elizabethan age in English history, the age of Francis Bacon and Shakespeare. Indeed, when we pursue it, what growth or advent is there that does not date back, back, until lost—perhaps its most tantalizing clues lost—in the receded horizons of the past? ↩
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According to Immanuel Kant, the last essential reality, giving shape and significance to all the rest. ↩
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Sir Walter Scott’s Complete Poems; especially including Border Minstrelsy; then “Sir Tristrem”; “Lay of the Last Minstrel”; Ballads from the German; “Marmion”; “Lady of the Lake”; “Vision of Don Roderick”; “Lord of the Isles”; “Rokeby”; “Bridal of Triermain”; “Field of Waterloo”; “Harold the Dauntless”; all the Dramas; various Introductions, endless interesting Notes, and Essays on Poetry, Romance, etc.
Lockhart’s 1833 (or ’34) edition with Scott’s latest and copious revisions and annotations. (All the poems were thoroughly read by me, but the ballads of the Border Minstrelsy over and over again.) ↩
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Nineteenth Century, July, 1883. ↩