Content:
Although the repository labels this manuscript as a draft of the Preface to the 1855
Leaves of Grass
, it appears to have been written in the mid-1860s and was potentially intended as the opening inscription to the 1867 edition of
Leaves
(Whitman has written "Inscription, to precede Leaves of Grass, when finished" at the top of the first leaf). While the poem in this form was never published, the line describing the Greek god Kronos as "brown-skinned" may have led to a similar description in "Chanting the Square Deific," which first appeared in
Sequel to Drum-Taps
in 1865.
