Still the rule and demesne | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: Still the rule and demesne
Whitman Archive ID: nyh.00007
Repository ID: MS 2958.9805
Repository: Catalog of a Walt Whitman Prose Manuscript in the New-York Historical Society Manuscripts Collection (AHMC)
Repository Title: Walt Whitman photograph and autograph fragment, approximately 1881, 1910.
Date: 1880-1881
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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Content: This prose manuscript fragment appears to be an early draft of lines that appear in the essay "The Poetry of the Future" first published in the February 1881 issue of The North American Review . Whitman revised and republished it several times. In Specimen Days & Collect (1883) the essay was titled "Poetry To-Day in America—Shakspere—the Future." The draft fragment is written on a small piece of paper that is pasted on a separate leaf below a portrait of Whitman. Since the manuscript was pasted down, an image of the verso is unavailable. The verso of the portrait includes a handwritten note from Horace Traubel presenting the portrait and manuscript to Frank and Mildred Bain.