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I.
(Blue-lined white paper, 8" x 5", one page)
Mr. House informed me that you accepted, and would publish, my "Bardic
About the two lines:
See the prismatic colors glistening and rolling!)
I have in view, from them, an effect in the piece which I clearly feel, but cannot as clearly define.—Though I should prefer them in, still, as I told Mr. House, I agree that you may omit them, if you decidedly wish to.
Portland av. near Myrtle
Brooklyn, N. Y.
This letter was apparently addressed to James Russell Lowell, then the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. "Bardic Symbols" was published in the Atlantic for April, 1860 (V, 445-447) without the questioned lines. Later, when Whitman included the poem in Leaves of Grass as "As I ebb'd with the ocean of life" (one of the "Sea-Drift" poems), the lines were restored. It is enlightening that only a few years before this, Lowell had deleted a line from Thoreau's "Chesuncook," without permission when he published it in the Atlantic. Thoreau took him strongly to task for the liberty and refused thereafter to submit any of his works to Lowell's editing. Apparently Lowell learned his lesson and thereafter consulted his authors before censoring their works.
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