In the late afternoon while the sun was setting over an ideal spring day, I walked out to the Harleigh Cemetery, where you built for yourself that magnificent tomb. How wise you were, Walt Whitman, to supervise the cutting of the stones, to watch the workmen while they were preparing your grave. What a beautiful spot you chose for your last resting place. The lake lay still in the warm evening air, the willows swayed gently as if patted by unseen hands. An old working-man, about to leave the cemetery, showed me the spot where you used to sit and watch them work. He told me how you wrote "pieces" on scraps of paper that you borrowed here and there, and how you read them to the stonecutters, who were building your tomb. I asked for the key. They keep it locked lately. I opened the heavy granite door, and stood for quite a while in the semi-darkness of your little house. I thought of you lying there on your bier, peaceful, indifferent, kind. Then I thought of the other monument you had built in words, a temple not made with hands, builded for eternity. Always self-sufficing, walking your own path towards your own goal. No legend tells of you, of your life or achievement. You live in the hearts of thousands of Americans. Soon, very soon, perhaps, your name and America will be synonymous. Walt Whitman, we here on earth are awakening to your ideals of America. Affectionately yours, GUIDO BRUNO WALT WHITMAN SPEAKS Ever upon this stage Is acted God's calm annual drama, Gorgeous processions, songs of birds, Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul, The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves, The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees, The liliput countless armies of the grass, The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra, The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes, The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars, The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. [_The Return of the Heroes_] Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power consign'd for once to colors; The light, the general air possess'd by them--colors till now unknown, No limit, confine--not the Western sky alone--the high meridian-- North, South, all, Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last. [_A Prairie Sunset_]