by Whitman · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
The poet’s final tender farewell to his Fancy as the clock’s ticking slows and the heart-thud stops, hoping the two blended selves go on together to true songs.
Connections
Topoi: Immortality Through Verse Motifs: Death, Clock Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Self-Knowledge, Immortality, Nostalgia Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
Good-bye my Fancy!
Farewell dear mate, dear love!
I’m going away, I know not where,
Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again,
So Good-bye my Fancy.
Now for my last—let me look back a moment;
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.
Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;
Delightful!—now separation—Good-bye my Fancy.
Yet let me not be too hasty,
Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter’d, become really blended
into one;
Then if we die we die together, (yes, we’ll remain one,)
If we go anywhere we’ll go together to meet what happens,
May-be we’ll be better off and blither, and learn something,
May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs, (who
knows?)
May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,
Good-bye—and hail! my Fancy.