Content:
A disbound notebook, mostly filled with names and addresses. However, the
sixty-first surface contains an idea for a poem about "The Storm / all
the various things that happen in a storm." It is possible that this is
an early conception of the poem that would eventually be titled "Proud Music of the Storm" (originally
titled "Proud Musc of the Sea-Storm").
The note mentions being "at sea," as well as "sleeping" and "wak[ing],"
all of which are ideas found in "Proud
Music." The range of dates in the notebook also falls within
the likely period of compositon for that poem, with an earliest
recorded date of January 1867 (leaf 18). "Proud
Music of the Sea-Storm" was first published in the February 1869
issue of the
Atlantic Monthly
, but was
completed by
30 November 1868
, when
Whitman sent a copy of the poem to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
