
I was away from England when your volumes reached me, & since my return (during the last six weeks) I have been very ill with an attack of hemorrhage from the lung—brought on while riding a pulling horse at a time when I was weak from cold. This must account for
my delay in writing to thank you for them & to express the great pleasure which your inscription in two of the volumes has given me.
I intend to put into my envelope a letter to you with some verses from one of your great admirers in England. It is my nephew—
the second son of my sister who married Sir Edward Strachey, a Somersetshire baronet. I gave him a copy of Leaves of Grass in 1874, & he knows a great portion of it now by heart. Though still so young, he has developed a considerable faculty for writing & is an enthusiastic student
of literature as well as a frank vigorous lively young fellow. I thought you might like to see how some of the youth of England is being drawn toward you.
St. Loe writes so bad a hand that I shall transcribe his verses for him

I
Thine is no Carol of weak love or hate; Thine is no Song by listless idler Sung; No poor attempt to cheat us from our fate; No shallow words from shallower fancies wrung. These are not thine; thy music pure is flung From out a heart that throbs & pants, which aches With its great love: our Suffering role among Thou com'st with thy great gift of song that makes All things seem bright & clear, all lovelier vision wakes.II
Though now the world is deaf & will not hear, Though now the foolish rail & sneer at thee It matters not: their frowns thou dost not fear Thou know'st the day will come the [illegible]

