Content:
This manuscript was probably written in the mid-1850s. The lines beginning "After death" are not known to have been published in Whitman's lifetime. The lines on the verso, beginning "I have all lives," are likely related to the poem first published in the 1856 edition of
Leaves of Grass
as "Poem of The Sayers of The Words of The Earth" and ultimately entitled "A Song of the Rolling Earth." Because the handwriting is similar on the two sides, we treat them here as a single text.
