Content:
This manuscript is an early draft of a portion of the opening poem of the "Calamus" cluster in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
Beginning in the 1867 edition and for all subsequent editions the poem was titled "In Paths Untrodden." The reverse (duk.00814) contains a list of suggestions of titles for poems or clusters of poems, including "The States," "Prairies," "Prairie Spaces," "Prairie Babes," and "American Chants."
Whitman Archive Title: Calamus—1st draft p. 341 [Long I was held]
Physical Description: number of leaves unknown, handwritten
View Images: currently unavailable
Content:
Edward F. Grier includes a transcription of this missing manuscript in
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York University, 1984), 405–410. Grier's transcription is pieced together from "photostats of six surviving pages" (held in the Harned collection at the Library of Congress) and from two partial transcriptions, made by Emory Holloway and currently held at the University of Kansas, as well as Clifton Joseph Furness's
Walt Whitman's Workshop: A Collection of Unpublished Manuscripts
(Harvard University Press, 1928) and Emory Holloway's
The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman
(Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921). This manuscript includes an early draft of "In Paths Untrodden," first published as the first section of "Calamus" in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Also included in this manuscript is a draft of "That Shadow My Likeness," first published in
New-York Saturday Press
4 February 1860 as "Poemet." This poem later appeared as "Calamus No. 40,"
Leaves of Grass
(1860); as "That Shadow My Likeness,"
Leaves of Grass
(1867); and, with slight changes in the text, in
Leaves of Grass
(1881–1882). Other portions of this manuscript are suggestive of "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", first published in
New-York Saturday Press
(24 December 1859) as "A Child's Reminiscence." This poem later appeared as "A Word Out of the Sea,"
Leaves of Grass
(1860); as "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," in "Sea-Shore Memories,"
Passage to India
(1871); and finally in "Sea-Drift,"
Leaves of Grass
(1881–1882).
