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  re "Goodbye My Fancy"

Ruskin says of great writers that they "express themselves in a hidden way and in parables." I have understood this of you, Walt, for many a year and I am bold enough to say that I believe I have followed the subtle winding & burrowing of your thought as far as anyone. I have known well from the first that "there are divine things well enveloped—more beautiful than words can tell." It is this mystic thread—running through all your poems that has facinated​ fascinated​ me from the first more than any thing else about them. I have noted the (by most people) "unsuspected author." . . . "spiritual, godly, most of all known to my sense." and I understand (tho' you will never tell—perhaps could not tell us) where the secret prompting comes from. Well, the "haughty song—begun   in ripened youth . . . never even for one brief hour abandon'd" is finished, and the singer soon departs . . . and the present listeners soon depart. But the song remains and will do its work—that same song is the most visible, potent and live thing on this earth today—and the singer and the listeners they go the way provided for them but they will not let out of the range of this prophetic utterance. I congratulate you, dear Walt, today, upon having completed the greatest, most divine, most humanly helpful work that has ever so far proceeded from any individual man—and this claim for L. of G. I will maintain while I live

I am, dear Walt, with love and admiration, your friend R M Bucke   see notes April 1st 1891