to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are.”^63 And we might com-
pare Whitman’s bold imagery, for example, to this venerable hymn by
Isaac Watt:
Jesus, the vision of thy face
Hath overpowering charms!
Scarce shall I feel death’s cold embrace,
If Christ be in my arms.^64In Leaves of Grass Christ appears as the persona’s chief avatar—a ¤gure
who shares many af¤nities with the idealized Whitman persona. The
poet apparently shared Elias Hicks’s interpretation of Jesus as an em-
battled outcast who struggled against false doctrines and whose eloquence
exhibited “the force of his power to exalt and inspire—to in®ame” the
human spirit.^65
The persona’s ¤nal farewell in “So Long!” is expressed in a lofty but
subdued stanza that serves as a coda to the poem and as a vale for the
1860 volume. As the persona prepares to exit his mortal life, his eyes fo-
cused on “the unknown spheres” and his head crowned by a saintly aura,
he takes his gentle and solemn leave of the reader, bestowing—like a de-
parting god—a ¤nal blessing. The stanza is quoted from the 1860 version:
Dear friend, whoever you are, here, take this kiss,
I give it especially to you—Do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done his work—I progress on,
The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct,
darts awakening rays about me—So long!
Remember my words—I love you—I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.Although he is still trying with his ¤nal breath to persuade the reader—
and himself—that his vision of the eternal life may be “more real than I
dreamed” his use of the simile in the last quoted line—“as one disembod-
ied, triumphant, dead”—serves as a gentle assurance that the poet and his
vibrant alter ego are still very much alive, still clinging to the satisfactions
of this world, and still playing the most subtle of death games and word
games with the reader. Whitman’s spirit is less than eager to depart for
“So Long!” / 159