Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... 4-715 Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman When, in England, in June, 1869, Madox Brown put into the hands of Anne Gilchrist Mr. William Michael Rossetti's Selections from Walt Whitman, he little dreamed of the result. Mrs. Gilchrist, having heard nothing but illwords of the poems, opened the book with feelings "partly of indifference, partly of antagonism." But as she read.... "The Soul Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than water ebbs and flows." "Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth," and other selections in the book, she became conscious of a new and most powerful influence affecting her. "I can read no other book," she wrote Rossetti a fortnight later. "It holds me entirely spellbound, and I go through it again and again with deepening delight and wonder." 680308 This new, and, he confessed, unexpected link in their friendship so pleased Rossetti that he begged to loan her his own complete copy of the poems; also a letter the poet had written him concerning his Selections, in which he offered his friendship. (" Permit me to offer you my friendship.") Anyone like her, he said, who so valued that " glorious man Whitman, one day to be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth," ought to read the whole of him. Considered abstractly and as a whole, the sound of the entire book was to him "like a portentous roll of chorus, such as the 'The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth, ' in Handel." In a manly way he referred to the doubtful passages in the poems. This she fully understood, for, on accepting the gift, she wrote she was certain that that " great and divinely beautiful nature could not infuse any poison into the wine he had...