Walt Whitman - Goodbye my Fancy

Here is a virtual movie of the great Walt Whitman reading "Goodbye my fancy" which he wrote in 1891 his final year as something of an epitaph by this time his health was in steep decline.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892 was born in Long Island, New York, the son of a Quaker carpenter. Whitman's mother was descended from Dutch farmers. Good-bye My Fancy shows us a dying Whitman who is no longer fighting the inevitable, but rather embracing it. In Good-bye My Fancy, Whitman is giving his farewell address to his audience as he knows that he will soon be dying. Throughout his poetry he has turmoil with death and the idea of his own mortality. However, in this final poem, Whitman is accepting of his fate. Whitman begins this poem by saying that he doesn't know how much longer he will be around or to where he will be next, but he doesn't seem worried by this. Whitman is speaking to his reader as his love which makes this goodbye very intimate.