The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Contemporary Reviews
About this Item
Title: [Review of Good-bye My Fancy]
Creator: unknown [unsigned in original]
Date: September 1891
Whitman Archive ID: anc.00135
Source: The Literary News n.s. 12 (September 1891): 282. The original electronic text for this file was prepared for Walt Whitman, The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Kenneth M. Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and the transcription was completed by consulting a representation of the original (e.g., photocopy, microfilm copy), and the transcription was completed by consulting a representation of the original (e.g., photocopy, microfilm copy). Following publication of that volume, Price received an updated transcription file from Cambridge University Press, and the Whitman Archive has used the final file from the publisher as the basis for the electronic text presented here. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the reviews, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Natalie O'Neal, Elizabeth Lorang, Vanessa Steinroetter, and Todd Stabley
WHITMAN, WALT. Good-bye, my fancy: 2d annex to "Leaves of grass." D. McKay. por. 8º, $1.
"Walt Whitman still lives. One more utterance from our old original individualistic American poet, now, as he tells us, in his seventy-second year, and not expecting to write any more; this, indeed, written as it were in defiance of augury. The grand old fellow in that little of new he gives us is in good fettle and equal to himself. Most of the volume is made up of recollections, memories not only of facts, but of thoughts, and they are not the least interesting, especially his recollections of persons once famous, but long since gathered in by the reaper. The following is mystical, indeed everything that Whitman has written is mystical, a shadowing forth of a half comprehended entity in thought:
"LONG, LONG HENCE.
"After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials,Accumulations, rous'd love and joy and thought,Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myr-
iads of readersCoating, compassing, covering—after ages' and ages'
encrustations,Then only may these songs reach fruition."—Commercial Advertiser.