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  Dear W.W:—

The German Grashalme rec'd.! How honors thicken & cluster. This book is a remarkable step forward. Do you know it gave me a curious (perhaps to you not altogether intelligible) feeling as I read yr familiar poems in the foreign tongue I have so long been reading. I seemed to see to feel you doubled, foreignized, speaking over there the same message to a new nation; & I also imagined this as but the beginning of a long pilgrimage you are to make around the world, uttering yr gospel in the thousand tongues of men. It was a very peculiar feeling & something grand & thrilling in its forecast, or prophecy-tinge.

I give you here an accurate line for line translation of all of Knortz's and Rolleston's prefaces although I don't deem them worth much (for novelty), except the inevitable biographical summary of Rolleston. The translations are very well done. The German tongue (flexible, many-inflected, wide ranging language) lends itself admirably to yr your! long sentences. They have     translated the very best of the poems for foreign presentation, I think.

Do you know anything abt how Rolleston came to be so good a German scholar? Studied in Germany when a boy doubtless? Do you know whether he or Knortz is married?

Give my love to Dr. B.

You can make any use you want to of the transl. tho' I merely made it for you.

WS Kennedy.  
  My Dear W Whitman,

Yr letter & papers both rec'd with thanks. I have written lately one of the most elaborate things I ever did—on the nature of Poetry—going deep down, canvassing all nature for analogies (Ruskin's five vols of Mod Painters helping me much) going over all the poets, & taking yr Burial Hymn of Lincoln as the model of the poetical style of the future. My article is scientific, I even reverently analyze Shakespeare's technique & prove that he inclined more & more to prose, abandoning rhyme. I show that yr your! long twenty syllable, & twenty-five syllable lines are the first true heroics ever written  in a Germanic tongue, and that while rhymes & the clang-tints of verse will continue, you have revolutionized the technique of the drama & the epic.

I am cunning on acct of our enemies, & only introduce my great friend—yourself—at the close, when I have cut the other poets to pieces & have interrogated Nature & compared the two—herself & the poets.

I had been reserving this piece of work until I moved into my new house. I married a darling little wife six months ago, & she & I have built a pretty cottage in Belmont—on the hill—magnificent view, at night the illuminated world of Boston twinkling below us—the revolving "Boston Light" out—flashing away in the harbor, lime-lights bright & numerous. By day birds & squirrels in the numerous cedars at our door—a perfect forest of Virginia cedars. We have half an acre with trees (wild) & are in complete solitude in our eyrie,–no neighbors within sight, except through the trees. Is not this tempting?   And now does it not tempt you to come & see me? Let me beg of you if you come to Boston, to let me know at once, & I will escort you out, & instal you in our prophet's chamber, where there is a fireplace, & a great prospect, with deserted woodland walks right at hand. Will you promise? Write & tell me. Mrs K. goes in to the city every day, so we shd have the day to ourselves, I also go in nearly every day, & you cd have the house to yourself much of the time. Do come & stay two weeks if you can. We have no girl (servant) to bore us. I am a little nobody, but I reverence you, & that sheds a little borrowed greatness on me.

I sent my article on poetry to the Century. They ordered an article on E.E. Hale, wh. I have sent also. I have a splendid plum for you in that. Hale wrote an appreciative review of yr first book in '56 or '60, also in the North American, & he told me that he thought he shd stand by every word of it to-day, But that's nothing, after all.

aff. W.S. Kennedy.