Content:
On one leaf of pink paper (21.5 x 13 cm), in black ink, with a fair copy of the
poem at the bottom of the leaf and a deleted draft featuring heavy revisions in
the same ink and in pencil at the top. This poem was originally numbered 68, and
its title was "Leaflet—." In
1860 it became the second numbered verse paragraph of section 31 of "Calamus." In 1867 Whitman split
up the two paragraphs and made them separate poems; these verses were moved to a
position between the "Calamus"
and a "Leaves of Grass"
cluster and permanently retitled "What Place Is Besieged?" In 1881 the poem was transferred to the
cluster "Inscriptions."
Content:
One of a series of draft introductions Whitman prepared for
Leaves of Grass
, but which were never printed during Whitman's lifetime. This particular introduction, composed entirely in verse, is most closely related to "Inscriptions," which first appeared in the 1867 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. However, no lines from this manuscript can be directly linked to any part of "Inscriptions." No other relationship to Whitman's published work is known.
