Content:
The page appears to be a draft of a title page for a manuscript titled
"Leave-taking
Words" or "Last
Ripples (A Prelude to Passage to India)." At the bottom of
the page are four lines from the end of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," first
published as "A Child's
Reminiscence" in 1859. The lines from the poem are
cleanly written, suggesting that they were meant to serve as an epigraph
for Whitman's manuscript. "Passage to India" was published first in 1871. On the
verso is a draft of a stanza of "Eidólons," first published in 1876. The verso also contains prose comments on the war, of which the connection to Whitman's published works is unknown.
Content:
This manuscript contains a rough draft of the poem "Song of the Redwood-Tree" written, according to a note
intialed by Whitman, during October and November 1873 prior to its first
publication in the February 1874 issue of
Harper's Magazine
. In 1876 the poem was published in
the group "Centennial Songs"
and annexed to
Two Rivulets
. The
poem appears ungrouped again in
Leaves of
Grass
(1881). Several leaves contain deleted and undeleted titles or
variant verse references to other published poems: "Eidólons", "Waves in the Vessel's Wake", "(a sonnet)" written "for
Century Verses," which appears from a Library of Congress manuscript to have been
a working title of the group that became "Centennial Verses" and "A California song".
Content:
This manuscript is a draft of "Eidólons," first published in a prepublication review of
Leaves of Grass
and
Two Rivulets
. The poem, along with several others, appeared in the 19 February 1876 issue of the
New York Daily Tribune
under the head: "Walt Whitman's Poems." "Eidólons" was reprinted in the "Two Rivulets" section of
Two Rivulets
(1876) and in
Leaves of Grass
(1881–82 and 1891–92). On the reverse of the fourth leaf (surface 8) is part of a faded letter in a hand that is not Whitman's.
