Content:
A faint horizontal line beneath part of "A City Walk," along with the words'
capitalization and central position on the page, indicate that Whitman may have
contemplated using the words as the title of an independent poem. The closest he
came to this title was "City of Walks
and Joys," the name he originally assigned to "Calamus" 18 in his "Blue Book" revisions of the 1860
edition of
Leaves of Grass
. This
title was changed in the "Blue
Book" to "City of orgies,
walks and joys" and finally became "City of Orgies" in the 1867 edition. The manuscript
also suggests making a list of things seen while "crossing the ferry," an idea
later developed and published in "Sun-Down Poem" in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
. The poem was retitled "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in 1860.
Whitman Archive Title: Original. Walks Down This Street;
Content:
Both parts of the title are underlined. A wavy line appears at the foot of that
section. The word "Original" at the head of the upper section suggests that
Whitman was sketching out a new poem for a revised edition of
Leaves of Grass
. If it was the 1860
edition, as his style of inscription here appears to indicate, it is possible that
this leaf could represent an early stage of the poem that would eventually become
"City of Orgies", 1867.
Content:
On a composite leaf consisting of two pieces of white wove paper. The smaller
section is pasted over some lines in the top-left corner of the larger piece, from
the top of which other lines were cut off. The verses became section 18 of "Calamus" in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
; the poem was permanently titled "City of Orgies" in 1867. On the reverse of the leaf (uva.00583)
appears an extensively revised pencil draft of the first poem in "Enfans d'Adam."
