Never Regret Thy Fall

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.”

Oscar Wilde

 

Icarus Fire

 

Icarus Water

 

*Photographs by Anthony Gayton

Whitman’s Trilogy

Whitman (Photo series by Anthony Gayton) is a very personal interpretation of three poems by Walt Whitman, namely “Are You The New Person, Drawn Toward Me? ; “Sometimes With The One I Love”; and “To a Western Boy”. The Images were designed to be printed large for exhibition, and do suffer somewhat from being so reduced in size for the internet.

 
 

Whitman, 2005

 
 

45. Are You the New person, Drawn Toward Me?

ARE you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning—I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade—this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

 
 

Whitman II, 2005

 
 

68. Sometimes with One I Love

SOMETIMES with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn’d love;
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love—the pay is certain, one way or another;
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return’d;
Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)

 
 

Whitman III, 2005

 
 

71. To a Western Boy

O BOY of the West!
To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of
mine:
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins;
If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select
lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?