I.
(Blue-lined white paper, 8" x 5", one page)
Mr. House informed me that you accepted, and would publish, my
"Bardic
Symbols." If so, would you as soon as convenient, have it placed in
type, and send me the proof?
About the two lines:
(See from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
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.
Yours & c
Walt Whitman
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.
