Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Language from the manuscript appears in the first poem of that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself." The phrase "light and air" also appears in the fourth poem of that edition, eventually titled "The Sleepers." The supplied first line, beginning "Under this rank coverlid," was added to a transcription of the manuscript that appears in
Notes and Fragments
, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (London, Ontario: A. Talbot & Co., printers, 1899), 16. The line is not currently written on the manuscript.
Content:
A clipping from the September, 1884 issue of the London magazine
To-Day.
Printed in the
issue is Whitman's poem "Resurgemus," and in Whitman's hand are some corrections and
a bibliographic notation. The publication history of this poem is
unusual: it was published first as "Resurgemus" in 1850, then
untitled in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, then as "Poem of The Dead Young Men of
Europe, the 72nd and 73rd Years of These States" in the 1856 edition, and as "Europe, The 72nd and 73rd Years of These
States" in the 1860 and subsequent editions.
The appearance of the poem in an 1884 periodical under an old title is
highly unusual.
