The second annex consists of thirty-one poems, all of which are of short or medium length, and contains a brief prefatory note in which Whitman wonders if it might be better for him to withhold the following “little tags and fringe-dots” from the end of his long and dusty journey. However, he adds that he is too democratic to omit them. The title of the annex provides the title for two of the poems; in the second of which the poet declares that he does not need to say goodbye to his fancy after all, since they have become one and shall depart from life together. 

Good-Bye My Fancy

The poet bids goodbye to his fancy and adds that he has words yet to say but knows that this is not quite the time to speak them. The best of a man’s words comes when their proper place arrives, and he reserves his best until his last.

On, On the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!

The “jocund twain” are the poet’s “life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years.” These two are inseparable and as fitful as flames. He sings of the crucial stage of America—perhaps even of humanity—a “strange éclaircissement” (enlightenment or explanation) of the past. The triumphant cry of his joyous voice justifies everything in a song “of utmost pride and satisfaction,” which he has sung from amid the common people. Now, having long sung of summer and autumn, he comes to sing of winter and “snow-white hairs.” With faith and love, his life and his songs go on to other work, continuing just the same. 

Old Chants

The “Mother of All” tells the speaker to accept the old ballads and to name for her the ancient poets. Of the many debts the new world owes to the old, the greatest is that of poetry. The speaker thinks of the chants of Egyptian priests, of Ethiopia, the Hindu epics, Greece, China, Persia, and the Bible. Then there are the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the poems of Hesiod, the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the Arthurian legends, the Poem of the Cid, the Chanson de Roland, the Nibelungenlied, Chaucer, Dante, the border ballads, Shakespeare, Schiller, Scott, and Tennyson. After this litany, the poet moves into the second person, speaking now to the reader. In a strange dream, these “great shadowy groups” of illustrious poets gather around you, staring with “their mighty masterful eyes.” You accept them all as you enter their midst, “curiously prepared for by them.”

A Twilight Song

The poet sits by a fire in the twilight, remembering the war. He thinks of “the countless buried unknown soldiers,” from all over America, from Maine and New England, Pennsylvania and Illinois, and “the measureless West.” In his mind, he can still hear the sound of the marching armies and see their “stalwart ranks.” He writes a special verse to commemorate the “million unwrit names,” recalling them from darkness and death. This twilight song embalms the unknown soldiers with love. 

A Persian Lesson

An old Sufi is teaching his last lesson beneath a chestnut tree in a Persian rose garden. He tells the young priests and students that “Allah is all… immanent in every life and object.” People may wander far away and reasons may be hidden but the “urge and spur of every life… the invisible need of every seed” is to “return to its divine source and origin.” This is true of all things and souls, without exception. 

The Unexpress’d

The poet wonders how anyone can dare to utter this...