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  To Walt Whitman. Dear and great Poet,

Let me greet you. Happy New Year to you. Your poems have come to me anew—here in Rome—and have revived and deepened my consciousness of great things, of beautiful things, of everything that lives. In writing to you at this late time (for I knew your poems many years back) I do what I have often wished to do.—Thank you.   Christmas Day brought me a present of all your writings—original editions—and hence this movement of admiration and love towards you.

It is fine to have your words, your brave sweet words, here where old Rome crumbles and new Rome grows; it is fine to have your visions of the States, of men and women in our land, while I am close to the Coliseum, not far from the Pantheon and the Appian Way. I shall write. Your poems are an Appian Way for the triumphal   thoughts of the American, and you celebrate a theatre of action greater than Rome's Coliseum in celebrating our wide land. I shall hope for the chance to say publically what I now write to you. I have been several years in Rome. I have my studies here—for I am a painter. I trust that the time may come when, before this year has gone—I may have the pleasure of seeing you.

Faithfully yours Eugene Benson.